


And Some You Do For

by softlyforgotten



Series: Thornton Hill [1]
Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, The Young Veins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-16
Updated: 2011-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyforgotten/pseuds/softlyforgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon Urie is lonely, Spencer Smith and Jon Walker are bored, and life in Thornton Hill seems like it's never going to be anything but mundane. Then a mysterious stranger sets up shop on Main Street, and suddenly everything is a little more magical. (AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Some You Do For

**Author's Note:**

> Originally done for Bandom Big Bang 2010. All art by the amazing [tardis80](http://tardis80.livejournal.com).

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/01.png)t was a nice tree. The leaves were big and green and there were branches low enough that kids could reach up and haul themselves up, sit in the branches and hold secret meetings or drop things on passer-by’s heads. There was a bird’s nest just visible about halfway up and mid-afternoon a sparrow flew back and forth with snacks from the café nearby, to the entertainment of anyone watching. People said, “It’s the dad, he’s bringing food back for the babies,” but the truth was that no one had the expertise to decide whether the bird was male or female.

The shadow the tree cast was long and dark and a relief on the sunny day. People passing by leaned against the trunk for a moment, feeling the scratchy bark through their clothes, fingers absently tracing the initials of teenagers from long ago. The tree was tall and beautiful in the summer, and it looked loved. It looked as though it had been there forever.

It hadn’t.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/02.png)iding down hills was always a challenge, because the brakes on his bike were shot to hell, so Brendon kept his heels hovering just above the ground, ready to dig in if necessary. There were no cars today, though, one of the main roads of the village surprisingly quiet, and Brendon blinked into the glare of the sun.

The straight road at the bottom of the hill rushed up to meet him and soon he was coasting along it, wind in his hair. He sat upright on the seat and stared – there was a collection of cars parked about halfway down the street, and he could see from here the small crowd of people in Greta’s bakery. He wondered if Greta was having one of her more legendary sales and he’d forgotten, but that seemed unlikely; even if he _did_ forget, she’d be sure to remind him, and try and sneak a few extra loaves of bread under some ridiculous ‘seven for one’ special.

A man walked out of Greta’s shop and stood with his arms folded, glaring at the building next door, and Brendon realised that it was new. The old barber had been closed for nearly two years now, since Mr Harrod’s death, with the standard official announcement declaring “it will open again in another week. Maybe two.” Now, there was an entirely new building there – taller than the barber’s used to be, with old stonework and a door with peeling blue paint, and _Curiosities_ printed in fading gold over the window. Brendon dug his feet into the ground and stared at it; he rode down this road every day. He was sure the shop wasn’t there yesterday afternoon, or even this morning.

Although, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like it always had been there. After all, it was impossible for shops to just grow out of nowhere. It was more likely that Brendon was just tired than that something miraculous had happened. Brendon didn’t believe in miracles.

He propped his bike up against the big tree that threw its shade over the pavement (something flickered uncertainly in Brendon’s memory, something weird about that old tree, but he dismissed it). He drew closer to the building and peered in the window. The glass was dusty and the light inside dim but he could make out the inside of a cluttered room, and a collection of Things on display. _Things_ because there really was no other word for them; in the window there was a hat sitting on a wooden head, countless pieces of jewellery spread over the counter, a tea set in a shade of blue Brendon didn’t think he’d ever seen before, a sprawling pile of thick books, and a large, slightly malevolent looking teddy bear. He saw a flash of yellow wings out of the corner of his eye and looked up at the bird cage hanging in the window, but it was empty.

There was also a sign. It said, _Open_ , and then, underneath that, _No cricket(s) allowed_. Brendon blinked at it and looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon, the sun sinking down behind the houses, and he was tired from an all day shift at the smoothie café, but he didn’t particularly feel like going home. His tiny, dirty house with its boarded up windows on the outskirts of town, next to the railway line, didn’t hold much appeal.

He reached out for the door.

“Now, there, young man,” the man standing outside Greta’s bakery said, and stepped closer. It was Ben Jackson – Brendon remembered that when he was little, he used to come around and help Brendon’s dad with the church accounts. He’d perform magic tricks with his handkerchief and pull candy from Brendon’s ear with a flourish. Now his gaze was stern and he twisted his hands together uncomfortably. Brendon swallowed hard.

“I think you’d better be getting home,” Ben said, going for a fatherly air, and Brendon thought, _you don’t get to be my dad. If my dad can’t be my dad anymore than you sure as hell can’t_ , but all he did was turn with a half-smile.

“I’ve got some time,” he said cheerfully, because it wasn’t like the town could keep ignoring him forever. He was going to be friendly, and wait in good spirits. “Besides, I’ve never been in here.”

“It’s new,” Ben said, and then frowned. “Go home, Urie. This isn’t kid’s stuff.”

Brendon’s face fell. “My name’s Brendon,” he said, and slipped inside. The chimes over the door sounded like Mozart.

  
[   
](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/184955.html#01)   


[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/03.png)on lounged across the couch and eyed the pile of DVDs with no small degree of wariness. “You know,” he said, gentle as he could make it, “You’re a little scary when Haley goes away.”

Spencer looked up and smiled tightly, eyebrows going up in a way that was probably meant to suggest his general amazement and bewilderment that Jon would dare suggest such a thing. It didn’t work very well, mostly because he was too busy colour-coding their living room to put much effort in it.

He opened his mouth, but Jon really wasn’t that interested in hearing Spencer’s (inevitably high-pitched) excuses about how it was a perfectly worthwhile lifestyle choice to keep yourself busy when you were bored. Instead, he stood up and wandered into the kitchen, pulling the vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and fetching a spoon from the drawer. When he returned, Spencer was adjusting the curtains’ length, twitching them until they were even.

Jon blinked at him. “You ever get the feeling,” he asked, “that we have too much time on our hands?”

Spencer stared up at him, and started making sure the books on the coffee table were aligned perfectly with their shadows.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/04.png)nside, it was like a museum. One from the storybooks, though, or the pulp novels Brendon read when he was fifteen, cluttered with Things falling everywhere, piles of them towering over his head, and the occasional label or price tickets in strange, copperplate handwriting. Books were balanced on top of hat boxes, with feathers peeking out from the crevices in between; cracked mirrors on the walls reflected corners filled with boxes and items that Brendon hadn’t noticed when he was looking directly at them. Brendon was reminded a little of his grandparents’ attic, before his Granddad died and it was cleaned out. Everything in here felt vaguely loved despite its well-used quality, and things seemed as if they were humming, just waiting to be picked up and taken home.

He absently brushed a cobweb from a jar of iridescent marbles.

“Be careful of the spiders,” a voice said in his ear. Brendon mostly succeeded in not squeaking out loud.

He did jump, however, and spin around. A tall, skinny guy was watching him, with a hat and about three layers of vests and shirts and scarves, despite the fact that it was quite a pleasant summer’s day outside. He was regarding Brendon with a half curious, half expectant expression. Brendon breathed out and said, “Oh, I – hi.”

“Hello,” the guy said. He cocked his head to the side and smiled crookedly, just the corner of his mouth twitching up. Brendon tried not to stare.

“I’m Brendon,” he said, drawing himself up a little taller, and trying to maybe not be such a spazzy freak. It was weird to introduce himself; he hadn’t been out of Thornton Hill since he was a kid, on trips to the city with his family, and everyone knew everyone, here. “Are you – is this your shop, then?”

“Yes,” the guy said. He shook Brendon’s hand, a weird, oddly formal gesture in someone who looked to be about the same age as Brendon. His hands were cool and dry. “I’m called Ryan Ross. Hello.”

Brendon shifted his balance from foot to foot a little unsurely. “Have you been here long?” he asked, calling up a bright smile from somewhere. Ryan seemed a little quiet, but he didn’t look like he wanted Brendon to go away and stop annoying him. Brendon couldn’t remember the last time he talked to someone properly.

“No, not very long,” Ryan answered. “I just opened today. I only got here late last night.”

Brendon stared, and then looked around the crowded, cobwebby interior. “But – it looks like you’ve been here forever.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, and waved a hand vaguely. “I had some help setting up.”

“Uh,” Brendon said, uncomfortably. He shrugged one shoulder up, let it drop. “Okay, then.” Ryan didn’t say anything, but he didn’t take his eyes away from Brendon’s face, either, interested in a slightly distant way, like Brendon was a distraction that could only last so long. It was a weird sort of look to be observed with, and not entirely pleasant, but it was better than being ignored. Finally, Brendon asked, at the risk of sounding like an idiot, “So you sell… like, antiques?”

Ryan smiled again, that crooked one, swift and fleeting. “Curiosities,” he said. “It says on the window.”

“Oh,” Brendon said. “Yeah, I mean. Of course. Sorry.” Ryan shrugged and Brendon looked around him again, said, “Where did you _find_ all of these things?”

“Around,” Ryan told him. Brendon raised an eyebrow and then flushed pink at his own rudeness, laughing awkwardly even though there wasn’t anything to laugh about. Ryan looked confused, but continued unexpectedly, saying, “Some people gave me, and some were just. I came across them, or fixed them. It’s. I’m fairly good at finding things, I suppose.”

“Oh,” Brendon said. “Well. That’s cool.”

Ryan nodded and didn’t say anything else; Brendon turned a little awkwardly and ran his fingers along a faded purple ribbon, tied to the end of a wooden bed frame, the main part of which was covered with yet more Things. The ribbon was made out of some sort of cotton, and despite the cool air inside the shop it felt almost warm to Brendon’s touch; soft, and curling up to meet his fingers when he reached the end of it.

“It’s pretty,” he said, looking up to where Ryan hadn’t moved.

“Yes,” Ryan said, and bit his lip, smiling. “It looks nice hung in windows and such, you know. Birds like it, too.” He hesitated and then asked, in a slightly dubious sort of manner, as if he wasn’t quite sure if this was the correct thing to say, “Would you like it?”

“Oh,” Brendon said, surprised. He thought about taking it home, winding it around his wrist and letting it fly out in the breeze behind him as he careened down the hills, out of town and past the church and his old house, to his grimy shack of a home. It was weird; he didn’t generally appreciate the aesthetics of things, more drawn to things he could _do_ or involve himself in, but there was something really nice about this ribbon, something soft and comforting. He thought he could almost smell his mother’s perfume.

He thought about taking it home. Then he thought about tying it in the dark, where it couldn’t flutter slightly as if there was a breeze that it alone could feel in this quiet shop, thought about it hanging limp and eventually made grotty from the coughs of gas and smoke Brendon’s oven was prone to giving out, abandoned and dirty above Brendon’s dirty dishes.

“I’d better not,” he said. “I wouldn’t have anywhere to put it.”

“If you’re sure,” Ryan said. His eyes lingered on Brendon’s face, dark and knowing, suddenly focused, and Brendon nodded hurriedly and backed away, tripping over his own feet.

“Yes,” he said mindlessly. “Yes, anyway, I’d better be going – it was nice to meet you, Ryan, I guess I’ll see you around—”

“Bye, Brendon,” Ryan said.

Brendon rode home as fast as he could, chest feeling tight and a little miserable. When he got there, there was a purple ribbon tied around his doorknob, fluttering in a breeze Brendon couldn’t feel.

Brendon came into the shop again the next day. It was a Saturday, and usually he would spend it half-heartedly cleaning his house in a vain attempt to get it looking vaguely like a place he’d want to live in, if he was feeling productive, or lying around trying to get reception on his shitty TV, if he wasn’t. He woke up in the morning, though, and when he went outside the ribbon was still there, bright and cheerful in the early light. He untied it from the knob and wrapped the end around his fingers with absent curiousity. When the next train drove by, loud and angry sounding, the ribbon flapped in the wind and the people on the train leant out and waved back at him, mistaking it for a gesture. Despite himself, Brendon grinned. Then he had breakfast and got changed and rode his bike back into Thornton Hill.

He took the scenic route, and it was ten o’clock by the time he got there. The little sign on the shop was flipped to _open_ and a small crowd of people were still in Greta’s bakery, wandering out onto the pavement and peeking curiously at it. He saw a few of them look at him distrustfully, and raised his chin high when he marched straight through the door.

“Polite people knock!” a voice shrieked above his head.

Brendon jumped, slamming his head against a cupboard positioned in a supremely annoying spot. He turned around quickly, looking for the voice, but there was no one there, not even when he did a full circle of the room.

There was a clatter from the dark doorway behind the desk at the very back of the store, and Ryan emerged, hair sticking up in odd directions. His eyebrows looked a little bit singed; Brendon decided against telling him.

“You alright?” Ryan asked, blinking. “The chimes can be a bit rude. Sorry.”

“The – the chimes?” Brendon turned around, and looked at the silver bells hanging above the doorway. “You have chimes programmed to talk like that? They didn’t say anything yesterday!”

“Oh, well, it depends on their mood,” Ryan said. “I was trying to hang that lampshade up—” he waved vaguely to where an Eastern looking lampshade was suspended from the ceiling, red silk and dark characters, “—but I got the words mixed up. Don’t worry about them.”

“You were,” Brendon began, eyes wide, mind racing, and then stopped, rubbed his forehead. “Okay, well, never mind. Morning.”

“Good morning,” Ryan said. He looked faintly surprised to see Brendon. “Did you need something?”

“What? No,” Brendon said. The words were faintly unfriendly, but Ryan left him a present yesterday, somehow, and Brendon wasn’t going to let any kind of gesture, however minute it might be, pass him by. “You just. You left a ribbon on my door, last night.”

Ryan looked weirdly guilty for a moment. “I, uh,” he began, and Brendon grinned.

“It was a pretty nice thing to do, dude,” he said. “Though I don’t wanna know how you know where I live.”

Ryan started to smile, then, properly, for the first time. It spread over his face and made him look a lot younger, less like he was busy pondering the problems of the universe in his spare time. He said, “I don’t know where you live.”

“No?” Brendon asked, raising his eyebrows incredulously.

“No,” Ryan confirmed. He paused, and added, smile gone tentative, “But the ribbon does.”

Brendon laughed at that, though he didn’t really know why; it wasn’t _that_ funny, but Ryan had that hopeful little smile, and it had been a long time since anyone made any sort of attempt to make Brendon laugh. Ryan looked surprised again, but also kind of pleased. Brendon wanted to ask, _where the hell did you_ come _from?_ but he thought that could wait, for a while.

Instead, he took out the crumpled package he had shoved in his hoodie pocket this morning. “Here,” he said. “I brought tea. As like, a thank you thing? My mom dries the leaves and stuff herself, it’s really good. This is my last bit.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, looking delighted. “Thank you.” Brendon passed it to him and Ryan held it strangely, cupping it close to him. He looked up at Brendon and turned a little pink, said, “Would you like a cup?”

Brendon beamed. “That would be awesome,” he said.

Ryan was weird to talk to, Brendon decided; he’d happily answer any question Brendon put to him, and he listened to Brendon’s random chatter with strange amounts of interest, but he never really volunteered anything himself. Occasionally he’d ask something, but more often than not, he just sat and listened to Brendon talk, and refilled their cups when they got empty. Brendon would have thought they’d be at the bitter dregs of the tea long ago, but it still tasted clear and hot and strong. He guessed that Ryan’s teapot was bigger than it looked, and that Brendon had had more leftover tea leaves than he had thought.

When Ryan did answer a question, though, it was invariably in a way that just engendered more questions. Where was he from before he came here? “I was living in New York.” Oh, wow, that must have been amazing. Why did he leave for a quiet, nowhere place like Thornton Hill? “I don’t know. I’d been there long enough.”

The weirdest moment came when Brendon asked if he’d miss friends or family from there. “Oh,” Ryan said, looking startled, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “I don’t have any friends. Or family,” he added.

Brendon blinked at him, mouth open. Ryan shifted a little uncomfortably in his chair, tilting his head so that his hat fell forward, shading his eyes. “Oh,” Brendon said, quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Ryan wondered, voice soft and wistful. Brendon stared even more, caught between confusion and a strange, fierce sense of kinship.

“Because, um,” he said, and looked down, tracing shapes in the dust on the counter. They were perched on tall wooden barstools that Ryan had dragged out from behind a bookshelf, deceptively comfortable and smooth, no splinters to be found. Ryan had his legs all folded up between the rungs in a way that was weirdly charming.

Brendon cleared his throat and offered, “Because it’s nice to have friends?”

“Yes,” Ryan agreed, and Brendon wondered if he had only imagined the quiet afterthought, “So I’ve been told.”

It wasn’t until Brendon’s stomach started rumbling that he realised he’d already been there for hours, and that he should probably get going. He told Ryan so and Ryan stood up, looking tall and distant again, ready to drift away into the backroom. Brendon had made him laugh, a little while ago. He didn’t want to let Ryan slip away so easily, he thought suddenly.

“Hey,” he said. “I haven’t got anything planned tomorrow.”

Ryan looked up. “Yeah?” he said, and smiled. “You could come around again, if you wanted.”

“Are you open on Sundays?” Brendon asked.

Ryan’s smile got bigger. “You can come around,” he said, “whenever you want.”

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/05.png)t wasn’t a bad job. Haley bitched at him now and again about wasting his potential and being lazy and not having the energy to even _think_ about what he actually wanted to do and okay, fine, working fulltime in a supermarket wasn’t exactly the most glamorous thing Spencer could think of to do, but it was alright. It paid enough that he could manage the (fairly cheap, anyway) rent on the little house he shared with Jon easily enough, and he didn’t have to go home and stress about work, the way you did in jobs that actually meant something. Spencer wasn’t even twenty, he only finished school two years ago; he didn’t see the need for a huge rush to go out and save the world or contribute positively to society or whatever Haley expected. He’d probably enjoy college more if he waited a few years, anyway. Thornton Hill was a comfortable kind of place, and hard to leave if you’d been there all your life.

Still, his job – while not being exactly _bad_ – was for the most part quite boring, and Spencer was used to zoning out while he swept the floors or stocked the shelves. Not many people came up to ask for help; it was a small kind of store, and it had been there forever, and everyone knew their way around.

It took Spencer a while to notice, then, the guy standing in front of him with a politely inquisitive expression on his face, and three or four of the frilliest scarves Spencer had ever seen. Haley’s grandmother, he thought vaguely, would be proud.

“Um, hello,” Spencer said. “Can I help you?”

“Hopefully,” the guy replied. “I’m looking for leeks?”

“Oh, they’re tucked away in a corner,” Spencer said. “We don’t get many people looking for them in summer. Follow me, I’ll show you.”

“Thank you,” the guy said, and stepped neatly alongside Spencer. He was wearing pointy black shoes, Spencer noticed with some bemusement, and his hat had a feather. Spencer had never seen him before in his life.

“Are you visiting?” Spencer asked curiously.

“No,” the guy said. “I just moved here a few days ago. I’m Ryan Ross, I set up the shop next to the bakery?”

“Oh!” Spencer said, and stared at Ryan a little more openly. The town had been buzzing with talk about the strange man who’d opened up in Main Street, and the even stranger items in the shop. There was a weird hint of mystery about the whole thing, and as far as Spencer knew, nobody had been into the shop at all, apart from the weird youngest Urie kid, who didn’t count. Ryan didn’t look very mysterious, though, here under the bright, plain lights of the store; although Spencer had the weird feeling he could only hear one set of footsteps echoing off the floor: his own.

“Are you settling in okay?” Spencer asked. He felt a little bit guilty, now, knowing how thoroughly the town had persisted in avoiding contact with the weird shop. It looked a little bit spooky, yeah, but Ryan seemed quiet and not in the least way threatening, and Spencer supposed it must have felt like quite an unfriendly welcome.

“Quite well, thank you,” Ryan said, and smiled, ducking his head. “I’m still finding my way around, though.”

“Hence the help with the leeks, I suppose,” Spencer agreed lightly.

“Yes!” Ryan sounded delighted. “I always have trouble sleeping in a new place.”

Spencer blinked at him, the conversation suddenly gone off in a strange direction. “What?”

“Well, I use the leeks as a depressant,” Ryan told him. “In sleeping draughts, you know. I had the unicorn hair and the hundred year old nutmeg, but it’s always the more common ingredients you forget.”

Spencer stopped in his path and stared. “Unicorn hairs?” he echoed.

“Oh, you don’t have any here, of course,” Ryan said, easily. “I brought a supply with me, although in any case, you never know when one’s going to wander through the worlds.”

Spencer decided to pick the easiest part of the gibberish to question. “Worlds? You mean, like, countries, right?”

Ryan raised an eyebrow, giving Spencer a faintly condescending look. “No,” he drawled, and then brightened. “Although there was that one time with the blessing of unicorns in Saudi Arabia. They wandered into Mecca and oh, man, that was a bad moment.”

Spencer blinked several times, but Ryan was still standing there, hopeful and sort of friendly and talking about unicorns. “Here are your leeks,” Spencer said faintly, holding out two bushels. Ryan’s face fell suddenly, and he looked down, and then back up again. He looked faraway.

“Thank you,” he said, and took the leeks. He didn’t talk to anyone else as he paid and left, but Spencer watched him, leaning on his broom, all the same.

  
[   
](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/184955.html#02)   


[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/06.png)on’s job might be boring, but at least it had hours that were flexible enough for him to drop in and see how Spencer was holding up at _his_ boring job when he felt like it. (Jon and Spencer had long arguments over whose job was the worst, arguments that Spencer generally won; taking photos for the local paper, no matter how dull the subject matter, was always going to be more fun than putting away cans of baked beans.) Spencer looked distracted, which wasn’t unusual, but in a more thoughtful way than normal, frowning as he stacked packets of flour in the shelves.

“Hey,” Jon said, popping up beside him. “You doing okay?”

Spencer turned his gaze on Jon, still frowning, and took a moment to snap out of it and answer. “Oh, sorry. Hi.”

“Hey,” Jon repeated, rolling his eyes affectionately. “Did something happen, dude?”

“Not really,” Spencer said, slowly. “I just. Had a very strange conversation.”

“Interesting strange, or oh god, please hand me the brain bleach strange?” Jon enquired, leaning on a shelf and grinning at Spencer. Spencer’s mouth quirked despite himself.

“Interesting strange, I guess,” he admitted. “But now I’m not even sure if it was real or if I imagined it.”

Jon raised his eyebrows. “That sounds kind of weird.”

“It _was_ ,” Spencer agreed, almost too fervently. “It was that guy. The one who opened the Antiques Store on Main Street. Ryan Ross, apparently. He came in to buy leeks.”

“And everyone knows how freakish leeks are,” Jon said, seriously, and Spencer laughed.

“Asshole,” he said, cheering up a little bit. “I don’t know, Jon. It was a really weird conversation. I don’t know if I’m maybe just going a little bit crazy from being locked up in here all day.”

“Mondays are the worst,” Jon agreed sympathetically, and then hesitated. “How was it weird?”

“He rambled about – I’m gonna sound crazy if I say it,” Spencer said. He paused and then looked craftily at Jon, eyes bright. “Hey, though, you know, you could always go down and meet him yourself. I wanna know what you think.”

“ _Spen_ cer,” Jon groaned, and Spencer widened his stupid blue eyes and smiled sunnily at him.

“Come on, Jon,” he said. “It’s not like you have anything better planned to do. Didn’t you say you needed a present for Cassie’s birthday, anyway? Maybe you could find something there. She likes vintage stuff.”

“Don’t think I can’t feel you manipulating me,” Jon grumbled. “Fine, okay, whatever. You better be making dinner tonight as a thank you.”

Spencer beamed at him, and Jon thought, _it’s kind of sad, how whipped you are_ as he ambled off to find out exactly what was with this guy.

The shop was quiet, apart from the tinkling little melody the chimes above the door played when he stepped inside, and a little dark, filled with a cool, faintly blue light like the onset of evening. He liked the way it smelled; a little like incense and a little like smoking pot outside on long summer afternoons, but different, too, something unrecognisable and familiar at the same time, and infinitely calming.

There was no sign of anybody besides him in the shop, nobody behind the counter, so he turned and crouched by a cabinet with a variety of jewellery scattered over it, some pieces tangled together. His hand hovered over it for a moment, and then he noticed a silver charm bracelet, with only two or three charms already on it. One was a horse, and Jon could almost swear that his attention was drawn to it in the first place by a twitch of movement, like hooves kicking in empty air.

He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It was pretty and untarnished and felt reassuringly heavy in his hand. He admired it, thinking already about how to wrap it for Cass, and where to find some other charms.

“Ah, yes, this is a fine example of Aravian workmanship,” someone said, and Jon turned around quickly to see a tall, skinny guy smiling at him. Ryan Ross, Jon thought. “It’s genuine Braka silver,” Ryan continued. “You’ve got a good eye. Would you like to pick out some charms?”

“Um,” Jon said. “Sure.”

Ryan stood up and led him over to the counter, brushing away a handful of dust with a careless movement. It seemed too clean when Ryan was done, like when Spencer had squirted the windows with Windex and bitched about how it should be impossible for them to get things this dirty, they didn’t even _touch_ the windows. Then Ryan opened it and picked out the ones Jon pointed to, drawn to the simple, elegant lines and shapes of strange letters and symbols, smiling and explaining as he did so.

“This one gives luck on every second Tuesday,” he said, lingering over a tiny silver flower. “This is for avoiding sudden showers without an umbrella. Would you like one for fertility?” Jon shook his head wildly.

It wasn’t one of the most normal conversations he’d had, as Ryan continued to talk about charms and good luck and whether or not the person who would be wearing it had blue eyes or green, but Ryan didn’t seem _that_ crazy. He was pretty harmless, really, Jon was sure, and the bracelet was ridiculously inexpensive. The only moment where Jon felt in the least bit unwelcome was when he was leaving, clutching the bracelet wrapped in tissue paper, at the same time that the youngest Urie kid came in through the door, and looked at Jon with a narrowed, almost hostile gaze.

The door closed behind him and Jon looked back to see Urie turning around and glaring at him, too, but in the background, Ryan was dragging out wooden stools, and smiling. As Jon watched, he walked across and flipped the sign to _Closed_ , even though it was two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. Jon waved, hesitantly, and Ryan looked surprised and then cheerful, waving back.

All in all, Jon thought, a rewarding enough excursion, and now he got free dinner tonight. It was a pretty good day.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/07.png)ogically, Brendon had known that it would happen eventually. Ryan was quiet and awkward, but he was exactly harmless enough for the town to adopt him. The day after Jon Walker from the paper invaded Ryan’s shop, Brendon lingered grumpily outside on the pavement as one of the tiny Alexes leaned up on the counter and talked to a bemused looking Ryan.

It was unfair to be angry, Brendon knew, scuffing his foot along the ground. It was unfair, and not very friendly of him, and he should be glad that people were being nice to Ryan. It was just – it had been good, Brendon thought, to have someone who met his gaze, looked _at_ rather than past him. Brendon had almost forgotten how nice it was to have someone to hang out with, and it was almost certainly coming to a close now. It was only a matter of time before somebody told Ryan about Brendon, and once they did, he would be on his own again. Jon was ridiculously well-liked around the town, Brendon knew, though he’d never really spoken to Jon himself; probably he would soon be deemed a much more suitable friend for Ryan than Brendon could ever hope to be. Brendon wouldn’t mind so much except it hurt to know that Ryan might end up thinking it, too.

Eventually Alex emerged with a hopeful expression, and raced down the street to where a small cluster of his friends were waiting, looking frightened and eager. Brendon resisted the urge to glare after them, but only barely and only because they were titchy, and it got a lot harder when one of the older ones, the one with the ridiculous name, looked straight at him and laughed, cocky and self-assured. Brendon ducked his head quickly and set his mouth into a firm line, pushing in through the doorway.

The chimes made a small, snoring sound above his head, and Ryan didn’t look up. He was bent, forehead furrowed in concentration, over a beheaded teddy bear, the stuffing leaking out of its neck and one armpit. Brendon took a confused step forward and Ryan made a soft, inquisitive humming noise, then flicked out his hands in a decisive sort of way.

Brendon’s mouth dropped open and he stood staring in disbelief as the bear rose a little jerkily into the air, hovering nearly a foot off the counter, standing up in mid-air. Ryan murmured something, too quiet for Brendon to hear, and the teddy bear, still sans head, did a little jig. The corners of Ryan’s mouth twitched, but he covered it with a stern expression.

“Don’t be so immature,” he told it, and it fell still. Ryan turned his palms up and slowly, so slowly that Brendon wasn’t sure for a minute if it was actually there, the thin, transparent image of a head slowly began to appear above the teddy’s neck. It grew darker and more solid until finally, Ryan nodded, and Brendon realised with a start that it was _real_ , attached to and fitting the bear as if it had been there all along.

“What the _fuck_?” Brendon exclaimed, and Ryan jumped, the bear thumping heavily back down on the counter.

“You scared me,” Ryan said, putting a hand to his heart, and then he smiled, disarmingly sweet. “Hi, Brendon.”

“What was that?” Brendon demanded, pacing forward and poking the bear’s head a few times. It felt soft and heavy, like the toys he had as a kid. Brendon looked up, staring at (the slightly confused looking) Ryan. “Was that – can you do fucking, fucking _magic_ or something?”

Ryan’s face fell. “Oh,” he said, passing his hand absently over the bear’s body. The fur grew back in places where it had worn thin, and the holes in the material sewed themselves up neatly. “Did I forget to tell people again?”

Brendon gaped at him. “It might,” he said weakly, “have slipped your mind.”

“It was that kid’s teddy,” Ryan told him, looking anxious. “Alex. He, he saw the bear in the window, and thought I could help. Apparently his friend – something to do with money? – kidnapped and tortured it. He was – it wasn’t his fault, and that was mean of his friend. I just wanted to fix it.”

Brendon pushed his hands through his hair, head reeling. “Fair enough,” he said, for lack of anything better to say, and then raised his head. “Did – so you’re—”

“Ryan Ross,” Ryan said, pushing a stray curl out of his eyes. “I’m a magician.”

“Right,” Brendon said, a little croakily, and sat down heavily on a chair that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“I don’t try to hide it,” Ryan told him, staring at the counter and twisting his hands together. “It’s just. I forget, sometimes, that people don’t know automatically, here, and—”

“Yeah,” Brendon said, cross-legged in the comfortable armchair. He sipped at the tea Ryan had fetched him, sweet and weirdly spicy underneath that, then grinned up at Ryan and said, “I get it, I do. Or, like, I can try. It was just… a bit of a shock. Uh.” He wound a finger through his hair and twisted it absently. “But, no, dude, this is kind of – really amazing, you know.” He tilted his head to the side and asked, “Hey, so, you can – heal teddy bears, and send ribbons off to decorate random houses. What else?”

“Um,” Ryan said, half-smiling. “A lot of stuff. I don’t know.”

Brendon flushed, rubbing at his nose awkwardly. “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t be intruding and shit, I—”

“No,” Ryan interrupted quickly. “No, I mean – I don’t know where to start. What do you want me to do?”

Brendon grinned at him, setting his tea aside and folding his hands in his lap, like a little kid at a show. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Show me something. Anything.”

Ryan cocked his head slightly, regarding Brendon with bright eyes. “Well,” he said, quiet, and then the shop was gone, and Brendon was standing next to him on a pebbly beach. The wind was strong and smelled of salt, and the sea was grey and rough. It was wild and desolate and freezing cold, and Brendon shivered and tucked himself into Ryan’s side without even thinking about it. Ryan went tense and Brendon thought, _idiot_. When he looked up cautiously at Ryan’s face, though, Ryan’s expression was surprised but not annoyed, even cautiously pleased, and Brendon grinned and squirmed closer to Ryan, his teeth chattering.

“Jesus,” he said. “You couldn’t have told me to grab a coat before transporting us off to the goddamn Antarctic?”

“The Antarctic is much colder than this,” Ryan told him, grinning, and Brendon got the sudden, vivid image of Ryan wrapped in coats and scarves and wandering over an icy landscape, dark against the white, an albatross circling slowly overhead. He blinked, and shook his head. “And anyway,” Ryan continued. “We haven’t gone anywhere. You can see if you look properly.”

Sure enough, when Brendon concentrated, out of the corner of his eye he could see the shadows of furniture, even the shape of the huge tree outside the shop window. Ahead of them, the beach seemed to go on forever.

“Could we keep walking?” he asked, imagining running into an invisible wall.

“For as long as you wanted,” Ryan told him, and put an arm around Brendon’s shoulders, slanting a wary glance at him as if worried he was doing it wrong. “But I think you might get too cold after a while.”

Then they were standing back in the shop again. Ryan’s hair was windswept, standing up at odd angles, but the sand that had clung to their shoes was gone. Brendon rubbed his eyes and laughed a little wildly. He was, he thought, more than a little freaked out, but Ryan looked quiet and as charmingly weird as ever, and really, Brendon thought, _really_ , this was maybe the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

“Okay,” Brendon said. “That was pretty awesome.”

“I can do a lot of things,” Ryan told him, voice clear and honest. “I don’t really know how to answer your question, though. That’s like me asking you what _you_ can do.”

“Not much,” Brendon said, and laughed. “I can make smoothies, and play shitty guitar, and ride my bike. I’m easy, see, nothing very special at all.”

Ryan perched on the counter, careless of the glass on the display case. He smiled for the first time as if there really was some great secret he was privy to, something huge and majestic that he could see about the world while others stumbled blind. “Brendon Urie,” he said. “Now you’re just being stupid.”

For a while, Brendon felt strange visiting Ryan. All of a sudden Ryan was something huge and unknowable and beyond Brendon’s comprehension (“So is it, like – some kids are just born with it? Like in Harry Potter?” Ryan looked down, eyes blank, face closed-off. “No,” he said, “I don’t come from this world,”).

Then one day when he arrived, the chimes over the door sounding a little like an alarm clock, Ryan was half-asleep at the till, slumping over the bench with his ledger opened in front of him. Brendon could see the writing trail away into squiggles and a large blot beneath that, and when he drew closer – to Ryan blearily sitting up straight – he could see a bunch of haphazard dates and a few (incorrect) sums down the left-hand side of the page.

“Hi,” Ryan said, knuckling sleep out of his eyes. “Sorry, I was up late last night. There was this stupid potion—”

“Um,” Brendon said, uncertainly. “Did you know that your hands are blue?”

Ryan looked down and made a horrified little squawking noise, staring at his dyed blue fingers with disbelief. “Oh, fuck it,” he moaned, dropping his head. “That goddamn pixie juice—”

“Dirty,” Brendon said, waggling his eyebrows, and Ryan made a face.

“I’m going to have to make a whole new thing,” he groaned. “And I didn’t even finish the other one last night!” His statement was punctuated, quite firmly, by a sudden loud and unmistakable stomach rumble.

Brendon’s lips twitched. “Are you hungry?” he asked, trying not to laugh.

Ryan tilted his head to the side, considering, and then offered a little uncertainly, “I think so?”

“What did you have for breakfast?”

“I don’t think I had any,” Ryan said, musingly, and Brendon made a horrified noise.

“Dude!” he said. “You can’t _do_ that, oh my God. Okay, just, stay there,” he added, and then left and went quickly in to Greta’s shop, and picked up some sandwiches and her famous chocolate mini-muffins.

“Um,” he said, looking around the bakery. “You don’t happen to have any – I just, Ryan next door, he forgot to eat breakfast, I think he might need—”

“One sec,” Greta said, grinning, and she ducked out the back and then returned with a litre of orange juice. “I have a spare one,” she explained, and refused to let Brendon compensate her for it.

When Brendon came back in, Ryan’s eyes lit up and he conjured a couple of glasses out of nowhere, and promptly ignored Brendon for the five minutes it took him to wolf everything down, while Brendon watched in fascinated awe.

Finally he laughed, and shook his head. “You need a keeper,” Brendon told him, and wondered why Ryan looked so suddenly thoughtful.

He didn’t know why he expected it, but for some reason, the concept of Ryan being a magician and Ryan being somewhat hopeless at regular meals took a while to sort through in his head, and it wasn’t until he spent the day at Ryan’s shop one Sunday that he actually got it. They took a basket of food out for a walk and a late meal because Ryan still hadn’t seen much of the scenery around Thornton Hill, and Brendon told Ryan that he’d meet him back at the shop after he’d quickly gone up to the café to check when his next shift was.

He found him sitting at the counter and digging into a huge plate of the remains of the cold roast they’d had for dinner.

“Um,” Brendon said, staring. “Dude, what are you doing?”

“I forgot to have breakfast,” Ryan said, sadly. “I’m having this for lunch.”

Brendon blinked at him. “Ryan, we ate dinner, like, fifteen minutes ago.”

Visiting the shop became second nature, something Brendon just _did_. He dropped his bike on the pavement outside after work and came in to talk to Ryan for hours, not leaving until it was late at night, his bike’s lights glowing in the darkness, and singing all the way home. Sometimes he would drop in on Greta first, pick up scones or fresh loaves of bread or – occasionally, on pay days – cake, while Ryan brewed the tea next door. Every now and then, if it had been a particularly long day at the café, Ryan would look at Brendon’s face once and then wave his hand, and the tea would be steaming hot chocolate instead.

Ryan used magic in an offhand, absent-minded kind of way, often enough that Brendon wondered how he hadn’t noticed it earlier, or how the rest of the town was still unaware. After the teddy bear incident, there had been a small trickle of visitors in through the door. Mostly it was younger kids, especially Cash Colligan and tiny Alex Deleon, who wandered through and poked at dusty objects, Ryan stopping objects knocked off-balance from crashing and shattering with discreet flicks of his fingers. Sometimes, though, Jon Walker would come back, once to ask Ryan for a new charm for some bracelet (“Anniversary thing,” he said, grinning), once to pick up an antique looking spice rack for his mom, every now and then “just to say hi” or “see what new stuff you’ve got”. Brendon was selfishly, viciously pleased when Jon very clearly didn’t know how to respond to Ryan’s awkward, stilted answers, flushing at what he thought were dismissals.

Occasionally, Spencer Smith would wait outside for him, peering in curiously when he thought Brendon and Ryan weren’t looking. One day, Ryan confessed, “I think I might have scared him off.”

“How?” It was a lazy kind of afternoon, both of them sprawled out on the floor of the shop. Ryan was making the dust motes form clouds and dance Swan Lake in a distracted sort of way.

“I.” Ryan turned a little pink, and Brendon propped himself up on his elbows to study Ryan’s embarrassed face all the better with delighted disbelief. “I think I started talking about unicorns. I forgot that I wasn’t… that this is Thornton Hill.”

“And that _that_ was Spencer Smith,” Brendon said, and cackled. “Dude, I – his mom and my mom used to be friends, he totally used to come around to my house when we were kids? He’s like, the most down-to-earth dude ever. He told me – when we were _four_ – that Santa Claus didn’t exist. It was pretty traumatic.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, surprised. “You’re friends?”

Brendon slipped back onto the floor, banging his head a little too hard against the wooden floorboards. “Oh,” he said. “Well, no, we were just. We were kids who played together when we were little. He went to the town’s school, you know, and I was home schooled, and we just never really – I don’t know, I think he always thought I was a little weird.”

Ryan looked displeased at that. “Idiot,” he commented, screwing up his nose, and Brendon ducked his head to hide his grin. It was strange, having a friend again. He couldn’t quite get used to it, and every now and then he’d tune out when Ryan was talking and revel in the strange, warm feeling of someone talking properly to him, because they wanted to.

“Sorry,” he said. “What?”

“I said, why were you home schooled?” Ryan repeated.

“Oh,” Brendon said. “My parents were just like. Really religious and stuff.”

Ryan blinked. “Were?” he asked, a little tentatively. “Did they like—”

“Sorry,” Brendon cut in. “Sorry, no, they’re still alive. They are. Religious. No, it’s just, my parents and I, we don’t really. Talk. Anymore.”

“Oh,” Ryan said. He looked at Brendon, eyes clear and full of sympathy. Brendon resisted the urge to scowl. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool,” Brendon said. “It’s cool because, like… what the fuck ever, right? They’re into stuff and I can’t, can’t pretend anymore, only it’s just… my dad’s the Reverend. So it was kind of hard for them to deal with that.”

“Okay,” Ryan said. He rolled with a complete lack of grace across the feet between them and slung his arm around Brendon’s shoulder. “Okay.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Ross,” Brendon said. “I’m fine, seriously. I was managing just fine before you came along.”

“I know,” Ryan told him. Brendon ducked his head and pressed his nose into the cotton of Ryan’s sleeve, curling into him, and the floor felt a little softer, like everything in Ryan’s shop was trying to be still and safe for him, whispering _just for a little while, we can look after you, just for a very little while_. Brendon could deal with that.

Ryan was waiting for him the next day, eyes bright and face twitching stupidly like he was excited about something but didn’t know how to show it. Brendon raised his eyebrows, sitting on one of the wooden stools and pouring himself a cup from the pot on the counter. He was tired, only Thursday when it felt like the week should have ended several days ago, and the teapot gave forth rich, steaming black coffee. Brendon looked up, but Ryan had apparently done it without noticing, too used to small wonders. Brendon thought he would never be used to it, but he didn’t mind that.

“So,” Ryan said, with studied casualness. “I was thinking. You should quit your job.”

Brendon blinked. “Oh, okay,” he said. “No worries. I’ve got some books I’ve been meaning to get to, anyway, I needed some free time. Rent isn’t that important, right?”

“Don’t be a jerk,” Ryan said impatiently, and Brendon laughed. It was kind of weird hearing modern slang from Ryan, sometimes – Ryan looked like a twenty year old, dressed like a seventy year old, and often talked like he was from another century. Brendon wondered idly how old he was. “I mean,” Ryan continued, and he looked a little embarrassed. “I think, um. You should come work with me.”

Brendon froze, coffee halfway to his mouth, and then scowled, setting his cup aside and folding his arms. “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t want any fucking pity—”

“It’s not pity!” Ryan snapped.

“It looks like it,” Brendon told him, glaring.

“Fuck’s sake,” Ryan said, and Brendon was, despite himself, interested. Was this what an angry Ryan looked like? It was vaguely childlike in an amusing sort of way; Ryan looked ready to stomp his foot at any minute. “Brendon,” Ryan said. “I’m not taking pity on you. I think the smoothie café is a shitty place to work but I don’t imagine that this place is much better. I’m being selfish. That’s all.”

Brendon swallowed. He hadn’t known that Ryan thought about him in terms like that. Something small and warm burned in his chest, caught off-guard still, even after weeks of getting used to Ryan. “I don’t want,” he said, “to work for a friend.”

Ryan folded his arms, stony-faced. “I’m not asking you to,” he told Brendon. “I’m saying work with a friend. Okay?”

Brendon picked up his cup of coffee and took a gulp from it, hot down his throat. “Okay,” he said.

Ryan looked a little surprised. Then he smiled, small and amused, like he couldn’t quite believe that he’d gotten what he’d wanted. “Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah,” Brendon answered. He felt a little tired, like he’d lost something, or like he was going to lose it soon. He looked at Ryan and thought in terms of clocks and rumours and questions like _how long?_ Ryan was grinning at him in a happy kind of way, though, so Brendon mustered a smile and asked, “When do you want me to start? Tomorrow?”

“Don’t you need, um… to give notice?” Ryan looked anxious. “I saw a documentary, once.”

“I work at a _smoothie_ café, Ryan,” Brendon said. “I think they’ll deal.” He stopped, mind catching up properly, and stared, bemused. “Wait, you saw a _documentary_ about quitting your job?”

“It was nice,” Ryan said earnestly. “The boss and the girl fell in love at the end. It was a bit weird, but sweet.”

Brendon blinked. “Ryan?” he attempted, the sick feeling in his stomach dissipating and giving way to glee. “Did this documentary happen to be called _Two Week’s Notice_?”

“Yeah!” Ryan beamed. “Have you seen it, too?”

“Oh my God,” Brendon said, “Hugh Grant would be so proud,” and promptly burst into laughter.

 

Brendon had been looking forward to his first day working with Ryan as a quiet alternative to the smoothie store. Brendon hadn’t raised the issue of pay, hadn’t wanted to do that, but Ryan had said vaguely at some point something about twice the amount Brendon was used to getting, and Brendon had blinked in surprise. He’d wait for the first pay check, he decided, and then gently correct Ryan on how much one was supposed to pay a shop assistant.

When he arrived at nine o’clock that morning, Ryan had a teapot out and waiting for him, and he looked surprisingly wide-awake, almost chirpy. Brendon blinked at him, still knuckling sleep out of his eyes. “I wouldn’t have figured you as a morning person,” he said.

“Oh, I just haven’t slept yet,” Ryan told him, and sure enough, at ten o’clock, he passed out in an armchair that was labelled _vintage goblin handiwork: $25_ in black copperplate handwriting, legs tucked up beneath him and making little snuffling sounds into his shoulder. Brendon tucked him up with a thick red blanket ( _apparently woven of mermaid hair, though I wouldn’t trust them, the liars: $8_ ) and went back to pottering absently around the shop. He tried dusting some of the books with a rag that he’d found behind the counter, but one of them kept making seriously discomforting sneezing sounds that made him jump, and then a book with _Songs of the Absurd_ printed in gold on the spine slid into his hand, feeling almost warm to his touch, and he ended up sitting on a stool behind the counter reading that, instead.

He almost missed it when the chimes over the door made a soft, pleased cooing sound, but then someone else tripped over the doorway on their way in, and Brendon started, looking up. He was expecting – and dreading, a little – one of the older citizens of the town (it was, he knew, only a matter of time before they came over to assess Ryan and his shop for themselves, and probably warn him away from Brendon as they did so), or maybe Jon Walker again, but it wasn’t anyone like that. Instead, the Way brothers blinked back at him, the younger one – Brendon wracked his brains for his name; Mick? Mason? Marcus? – turning slightly pink in the cheek.

  
[   
](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/184955.html#03)   


“Um, hi?” Gerard said. Brendon liked Gerard. He used to – well, Brendon thought regretfully, probably still did, and Brendon just didn’t know about it anymore – walk down in his big black overcoat to the Church, and then sit inside and stare about at the stained windows and sculptures with wide eyes. He’d usually sit with Brendon in the grounds outside for a while, too, and even though they had never been friends, Gerard had always been fun to talk to.

“Hey,” Brendon said, remembering himself. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, you work here?” Gerard brightened, and his younger brother looked a little relieved. “I thought you were working at the café up the street. Did you set this place up? It’s amazing!”

“Um, it’s my first day,” Brendon confessed, smiling a little sheepishly. “It’s Ryan’s store. He’s sleeping,” he added, and pointed to Ryan. Gerard’s younger brother jumped, and started to look wary again. “If you need help with something I can wake him up, though.” He wondered if maybe this wasn’t a good idea. He’d never woken Ryan before, and Ryan really, _really_ didn’t strike him as a morning person.

“Oh, no, it’s cool,” Gerard said. “Me and Mikey—”

“ _Mikey_ ,” Brendon said, grinning, and then flushed when Gerard and Mikey shot startled glances at him – oh, right, he’d said that aloud.

“—um, we’re just looking,” Gerard finished.

“Knock yourself out,” Brendon said, shrugging. For a while, he watched them, but mostly they just pottered around the place and called each other over from time to time, voices soft and lit up with wonder and laughter, and after a while Brendon returned to his book. The Way brothers were known through town for being really close. Brendon and his siblings had never – still, he wished so many of them hadn’t moved away. He thought maybe Kara would have understood.

“Oh, wow,” Gerard said, and when Brendon looked up, he was clutching a dusty tin of what looked like some form of art supply to his chest, flailing his hands around excitedly. Brendon watched warily, wondering if Gerard would knock something over, but the shop seemed to be able to take care of itself; Gerard’s hand mysteriously snuck perfectly through the gaps between things, and as Brendon watched a lamp with two dusty little claws at its base picked itself up and sidled away. Brendon shot a startled glance at Ryan, but Ryan was still peacefully asleep.

“I think, just this for today,” Gerard decided aloud, and then brought it over to Brendon. It was a set of dusty oil paints, not looking like anything particularly special to Brendon, and he shrugged and looked up.

“Three dollars,” he said. “You want it wrapped? I’ve got some brown paper down here.”

“It’s cool on its own,” Gerard said, rummaging in his pocket. “This is a great place, dude. Three dollars is like – if you look at the back, they’re _really_ good paints, wow.” He slid open the box carefully and pulled out a tube, tapping his finger on the sample square in the middle of it. It was a weird kind of blue; like a light sky in the middle of the night. “I’ve been looking for a shade like this for _ages_. You should tell – Ryan, is it? Tell him we’ll be back.” At that, Mikey snuck another uncertain look at the sleeping Ryan, and Brendon bit back his laughter. Strangers were always slightly frightening in a town like this, and Mikey struck him as a particularly nervous sort of thirteen year old.

“I’ll tell him,” Brendon said.

In his chair, Ryan shifted and said, clear and distinct, “They’re just dreams, they won’t hurt you,” and Mikey jumped again, eyes darting from Ryan to Brendon to Gerard. Brendon shrugged.

“He didn’t sleep last night,” he offered, as some kind of explanation, and Gerard nodded, beaming.

“I know how that goes,” he said. “Come on, Mikey.” He tucked his paints under one arm and wound his way back through the shop. Brendon wondered if he was the only one noticing the furniture sneakily darting out of the way as the two brothers approached.

At the door, Gerard stopped and turned. “Hey, it’s nice to see you again, Brendon,” he said, suddenly earnest. “You look good.”

“Oh,” Brendon said. He bit his lip to keep back the almost foolish grin growing on his face, but it didn’t do much of anything. “Thanks,” he said, and in his sleep, Ryan laughed.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/08.png)t had been a long day, and by four, Jon was ready to go home. He took one last picture of Elaine Delger, otherwise known as The Most Boring Woman To Ever Create A Mural For School Children In The World, and then clapped Tom on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to finish up with the interview,” he said cheerfully, and Tom gave him a look that promised slow death, but Jon was already skipping out of the stuffy living room and round the corner onto Main Street.

Stopping by Ryan’s shop was an afterthought, and mostly just because Jon kind of wanted to say thank you, after all. There was something about the things he had picked up there – he was thinking about maybe trying to find something for the little house he and Spencer shared, actually, just to see what it would do to their quiet home. Ryan seemed nice, too, if a little vague, and not particularly fond of people in general. Jon was sorry about that; Ryan was interesting, and Jon would like to have gotten to know him better, but if short, startled sentences were the only responses he was ever going to get, he didn’t really see anything going anywhere.

Inside the shop, though, there was no sign of Ryan; instead, Brendon Urie was half-sprawled across the counter, reading a thick, old-looking book. “Oh,” Jon said, surprised. “Hi.”

Brendon looked up and scowled at him. Jon shifted uncomfortably. He’d never actually spoken to Brendon, but from the few encounters they’d had, he got the feeling that possibly he’d viciously murdered all of Brendon’s beloved childhood pets in front of him. Probably he had done it in his sleep, as he couldn’t remember anything like that happening.

“What can I do for you,” Brendon said flatly. It wasn’t a question; Jon had an uneasy feeling that it might be a threat.

“Um,” Jon said. “Nothing in particular. Just browsing, I guess. Do you work here?”

“Yes,” Brendon said. Then he folded his arms and proceeded to glare at Jon as he walked around the shop uncomfortably.

“Um,” Jon said again, turning a little bit pink. He liked to think of himself as a friendly sort of guy, but Brendon was both discomforting and slightly, well, _mean_. Jon didn’t know what he’d done. “Where’s Ryan?”

Brendon frowned. For a moment, Jon thought he was going to say something like _wouldn’t you like to know_ , but instead he just jerked his head at a chair, and Jon looked over. For a moment he was confused, but then the shadows shifted slightly and Ryan turned his face, sighing out a breath, and Jon laughed short and warm despite the company.

“Oh,” he said. “I guess he did need someone else to help run this place.”

Brendon’s back stiffened. “Ryan does a great job,” he said, coldly. Jon blinked at him.

“Um, I know,” he said. “I – I think Ryan’s a great guy, dude, a little stand-offish, but—”

“Ryan is _not_ stand-offish!” Brendon hissed, and Jon threw his arms up.

“Sorry!” he said. “I just – I only came to say thank you, really. For the things I’ve gotten here. Could you tell him thanks for me?”

Brendon relaxed, slightly, though he didn’t stop glaring. “You bought them, didn’t you?” he enquired coolly. “Paid for them? Why would you say thanks?”

“Because they’re special,” Jon said, without thinking. He flushed and looked down, said, “This whole place is special. Look, I don’t know how I’ve pissed you off or whatever, but I’m honestly not planting bombs or anything, I just came to say—”

“Okay,” Brendon said.

“What?” Jon blinked, stared at him. He had a feeling he was really out of his depth.

“Okay,” Brendon repeated. He looked a little embarrassed. “I’m glad. That you think it’s special. And,” he added, unconvincingly, “I’m not pissed off at you.”

“Okay,” Jon echoed, warily. “I guess I’ll just—”

“Oh,” a rusty voice said to the side, and Jon looked to see Ryan struggling upright in the chair. “Hi, Jon.” Ryan rubbed his eyes and then looked at a broken clock on the wall, its hands stuck at midnight, and gaped. “Is it night time already?”

“It’s about half past four,” Brendon said, and his voice was suddenly warm; amused and kind. When Jon looked over, startled by the sudden change, Brendon was smiling. “D’you want some tea? I made a pot about half an hour ago. Well, your _pot_ made a—” and then he took a look at Jon and shut up, mouth snapping closed. Jon tried not to feel too bewildered.

“Yes, please,” Ryan said, and yawned hugely. He looked at Jon and asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with the back of one hand, “Did your mom like that spice rack?”

Jon blinked. Ryan had never really made any attempt at conversation before, and Jon wondered suddenly if it had something to do with just being awake. He thought about Brendon, all his hackles raised the moment Jon walked in, almost _snarling_ , and the careful way Ryan would respond to conversation, as if he was walking into a trap, and things started to make a kind of sense.

“Yeah,” he replied. “She did, a lot. It – the food tastes better than ever.”

“Secret ingredient,” Ryan said, and then actually _waggled his eyebrows_. Jon laughed out loud, surprised, and thought that he would have to come around when Ryan was sleepy and unguarded more often. He turned that thought carefully over in his head, wondering if it was too creepy, and decided that it wasn’t, but he probably wouldn’t repeat it to Spencer all the same.

“What’s that?” he asked, just as Brendon slid around the counter with a cup outstretched for Ryan.

Ryan took the cup and sipped with a weird sort of dignified grace from it, and then he said, “Love,” and Brendon almost fell over, he laughed so hard. Jon stared at him, eyes wide, and Brendon pulled himself together pretty well, rubbing his hand over his face, but he was still giggling behind his fingers, and his eyes were bright and stupidly sparkly. Jon thought that Brendon looked a lot nicer when he was happy.

“That,” Brendon said, “is maybe the cheesiest thing I have ever heard in my life.”

“It’s true!” Ryan protested, and Jon laughed, despite himself. Brendon glanced at him sharply, eyebrows drawing together, but after a moment he turned away without saying anything, and it wasn’t exactly mean.

“I wanted to thank you, actually,” Jon said. “The spice rack is really – it’s really good, and um, Cassie – my girlfriend – she loves her bracelet.” He hesitated, because Spencer had laughed at him when he’d mentioned it, and he didn’t _really_ want to be branded as crazy just as Ryan was starting to be kind of friendly, but after a moment he gathered his courage and continued.

“It’s, weird stuff happens,” he said, and Brendon looked up from where he was pouring himself a cup of steaming tea, gaze clear and shrewd. “When she’s wearing it, I mean. Lucky things. Not – not amazingly so, just that – like, the other day, she came down from the city and we went out on a picnic, and there were these wild swans flying by, even though you never see them round here, and it’s the wrong season, anyway. Or, um, when I went up to visit her, these sparrows came and ate leftovers off our plates once we were done at this café, or birds will sing really nicely – anyway, it’s just. It almost always has something to do with birds. I just thought it was. Nice.”

“Oh,” Ryan said. Brendon had his head down, hair falling over his face, but Jon thought he could see him smiling. Ryan sounded cheerful, and unsurprised. “Well, I mean, it’s as much because you love her as it is anything to do with the bracelet,” Ryan told him, and Jon nodded, even though he didn’t know what that meant.

“I should get home,” he said.

“Okay,” Ryan agreed, and this time Jon heard it, the unspoken _come back soon_. When he turned at the door, Ryan was getting up from his chair, back turned to Jon, talking in a low voice to Brendon, but Brendon was watching him, and as Jon hesitated, he nodded, just once.

Truce, Jon thought, and left.

When he got home, Spencer had already arrived back from the supermarket, and was in the shower. Jon put out the leftovers from their meal last night, because they generally ate pretty early, both of them hungry after a day at work, and opened the TV guide, flipping idly through it. There wasn’t anything he was particularly interested in, but he guessed Spencer would talk him into watching Die Hard – since it was on – anyway.

Spencer emerged, towelling his hair dry, and Jon pushed a bowl of microwaved pasta across the counter to him. “Thank _God_ it’s Friday,” Spencer said fervently as a greeting, and Jon laughed.

“Long day?” he enquired sympathetically, and Spencer sighed, rolling his shoulders back.

“Long _week_ , long _year_ ,” he said. “Also there were kids.” He poked miserably at his meal. “I hate kids.”

“I know,” Jon said. He paused for a moment, and then burst out, “So, I think we should go to the new shop tomorrow.”

“Whatshisface’s shop?” Spencer raised his eyebrows. “The weird guy? Unicorn Dude?”

“Ryan,” Jon said, firmly. “And he’s not so bad. Just a little vague. I stopped in today – they’re really sort of, uh, okay, once you get used to them—”

“They?” Spencer repeated. His eyebrows went higher. Jon’s fingers itched for a camera.

“Oh, yeah. Uh, the Urie kid – Brendon? He works there, too.” Jon stopped, curious, and asked, “What’s _his_ deal, anyway? I never knew him.”

“Okay, first off,” Spencer says, dryly, “He’s a couple of months older than me, so please don’t call him kid. And I don’t know what his deal is. Um, I think he just, like, hates the world or something? Self-righteous angst and such. Like Gerard a year ago only without actual reasons, and times a _million_.”

Jon laughed, and then frowned. “I don’t know, he didn’t really seem like that, though. It was weird. Doesn’t he not talk to his family or something?”

“I really don’t know what the whole story is, Jon,” Spencer told him. “I just know what people have told me. I think he moved out or something, had a big fight, and since then has been hell bent on proving his own superiority to the rest of the town? I don’t _know_. All I remember is that about a year and a half ago there was a big fuss, because he apparently lost it at, like, half of the council.”

“Huh,” Jon said. “It’s weird. He seems to like Ryan.”

Spencer shrugged, looking suddenly tired. “Some people are just like… you know. Think they’re bigger than Thornton Hill, but won’t leave it because they’re scared of the city. It’s not really surprising that he’s attached himself to the first new thing that’s come along.”

“Wow,” Jon said, surprised. “I didn’t know you like, genuinely didn’t like him or whatever—”

Spencer sighed in exasperation. “I don’t,” he said. “Dislike him, I mean, I don’t think _anything_ about him. Well, except when I was a kid, I think I thought he was pretty funny then. But I haven’t spoken to him since we were both five years old and Mom stopped taking me and the twins to church, seriously. I don’t have an opinion about him. I’m just saying what I’ve heard.”

“Okay, then,” Jon said. “So you’ll come in with me to see what’s going on there tomorrow, then?”

Spencer regarded him suspiciously. “What’s in it for me?”

Jon shrugged. “Die Hard’s on tonight,” he said nonchalantly, and Spencer grinned, leaning across the counter to shake his hand.

“Deal,” he said.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/09.png)on had clearly become weirdly attached to the little shop, so as promised, by one o’clock the next day, Spencer was showered and dressed and ready for the walk up and then down the hill to Ryan’s shop. Jon was bouncing a little with excitement, and Spencer laughed at him.

“Seriously,” he said. “What’s going on? What’s so special about this place?”

Jon grinned sheepishly, turning a little bit pink. “I just really like it,” he said. “And like – the birds thing—”

Spencer groaned. “Oh, God,” he said, reaching out to shove Jon a little so that he stumbled on the way down their garden path. “You’re not still set on this, are you? You think there might be magical flying carpets in there, as well?”

“We should ask,” Jon said, still grinning all over his stupid face, and Spencer narrowed his eyes, because Jon didn’t sound entirely like he was joking.

It was a warm summer’s day outside, hot enough that Spencer was a little bit sweaty by the time they reached the shop and wishing that he had put on one of his headbands this morning to keep his hair back from his face (he didn’t care what Jon said. He thought they were stylish). As they pushed open the door, though (there was a sound above them that sounded suspiciously like a group of hysterical teenage girls bursting into laughter, but when Spencer looked up, there wasn’t anyone there), the cool air of the shop hit them, and Spencer felt at once comfortable.

Then he had to stop and stare, because Brendon Urie was standing on the stool and talking very loudly over the top of Unicorn Du—Ryan, gesturing widely and beaming, and both of their voices were rising and mingling, clearly trying to get the upper hand of the conversation.

“You have it _so wrong_ ,” Brendon said, “So, so, _so_ wrong, and you are pinching it straight from that crappy adaptation of Peter Pan, and I don’t care how cute you think Jeremy Sumpter is, I _will not stand for it_ —”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan interrupted, getting control of the conversation for a moment, “Tell me again where you met all these mermaids that you’re basing your knowledge on—” and Brendon burst into laughter again and opened his mouth, and then he apparently noticed them, because he fell off the stool with a loud clatter. Spencer started forward, because that was a bit of a fall, the stool was pretty tall, but Brendon was already scrambling up, not even complaining a little. Spencer went up on and his tiptoes and noticed, to his astonishment, that there were a couple of large, soft looking beanbags settled around the stool behind him, apparently expressively for that purpose. It must be very annoying, he thought, to have to trip your way over them in order to get to the stool. Showed forethought, though.

The shop was suddenly quiet, Brendon blank-faced, and Ryan had his head ducked, fedora pulled over his eyes. Why was he even wearing a hat indoors, Spencer wondered, although he had to admit that it did a pretty good job of shadowing the way his mouth was twitching.

“Um,” Jon said, and his voice was thick with withheld laughter too. “Hi, again.”

“Hello,” Ryan said, politely. Brendon had turned away, slightly, wasn’t looking at anyone. He had an excellent poker face, Spencer thought uneasily, something guilty and unexpected twinging in his stomach, but his eyes looked dark and miserable. “What can I help you with?”

“I brought Spencer to meet you properly,” Jon said. “He’s my roommate. Spencer, Ryan, Ryan, Spencer.” He hesitated for a moment and then added, “And you know Brendon.”

Brendon raised his chin and turned back to them, spine straight, eyes dark and defiant. He looked, Spencer realised, startled, like he was just waiting to be cut down. There was that unpleasant feeling in Spencer’s stomach again.

“Yes,” he said, and grinned in a determined (and possibly manic) sort of way. “Though the last time we talked you were considerably shorter.”

“Um,” Brendon answered, sounding supremely surprised. He looked at Spencer with a strange, intent expression; almost _hungry_ , Spencer thought, and he thought about something else that he hadn’t told Jon, last night: that sometimes, Brendon would come into the supermarket and pick up things on special, the wilted vegetables, the milk that was nearly out of date, and he would keep his head ducked low and wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, and that sometimes, if it was late and Spencer was tired and not censoring his own thoughts, he would think that maybe there wasn’t anyone in the world who was lonelier than Brendon Urie.

Spencer remembered, suddenly, playing with Brendon before he went to school and met Jon (who had always been in the year above him, but was nice enough to play with Spencer anyway), hours spent on the lawn of the church. Spencer had always thought it was really annoying, and he’d hated it when his mom announced her intention to be on the church restoration committee for a year, but Brendon had known all the secret places to hide and explore, the tombs to climb down into. Their games of hide and seek had been legendary. He remembered, too, the acute jealousy and wonder on Brendon’s face when Spencer had told him that he’d be going to school that fall.

He thought about the time a year ago he’d stopped by the family house for dinner with his mom and dad and the twins, and Ginger had looked tired and slightly annoyed. “Big fuss at work today,” Spencer’s dad had told him. “Apparently the youngest Urie boy’s moved out of home in bad circumstances, and he turned up to talk to his mom today. Grace Urie’s a good woman, but I think she might have upset Ginger today, the way they carried on.”

The next day, Spencer had been walking down the street when he saw Brendon, head ducked down, hands tucked in his hoodie pockets, glaring at the street. For a moment, Spencer had almost let him pass by, but then he had remembered playing with Brendon as a kid, laughing, and he remembered that Brendon was his age, and tried to think about what it would be like. He had put out a hand and caught Brendon’s arm without thinking, said, “Hey, hey. You alright?”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Brendon had spat, and wrenched away from him.

Now, Spencer wondered how much condescension Brendon had already put up with. He smiled unsurely at him and asked, “Do you still eat mud pies?”

Brendon barked a laugh, uncertain but still real. Spencer thought about the way Brendon had looked when he and Jon had come in, the way his laughter then had lit up all his face, and he thought that Brendon looked nice when he laughed like that, that Spencer liked it, that he would like it more if he could be the cause of it.

Ryan darted glances between all of them, brow furrowed, looking confused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you want to buy something, Spencer?” He sounded a little cold, and Spencer started, wondered if maybe they weren’t meant to stand around and just loiter like this, if Jon had failed to pick up on hints (it wouldn’t be the first time. Jon was Spencer’s best friend, but he was also incredibly and unbelievably oblivious more often than not).

Spencer opened his mouth to say that they would just be on their way, then, had thought they would just stop by, sorry for interrupting, but Brendon got in there first, voice firm, and there was that faint sound of laughter underneath it again. His eyes were bright, Spencer noticed.

“Ryan,” Brendon said, “When you have people over who want to be your friend, it’s nice to offer them something to drink.”

“Oh,” Ryan said, and flushed, pink and pleased.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/10.png) don’t entirely understand,” Ryan said on Sunday night, as they were closing up the shop (which basically consisted of flipping the sign on the door and pulling down the blinds. Nothing ever _happened_ in the shop, barely anybody came in, and Brendon found he didn’t mind in the slightest not having a weekend, especially when Ryan had told him he could take a few days off whenever he wanted. Really, Brendon thought, he just liked hanging out with Ryan, even if Ryan had developed a habit of sleeping through the days. Brendon kind of thought that Ryan needed someone to look after him properly and make him go to sleep at night).

“Understand what?” Brendon asked, sitting back in an armchair and kicking his legs up on a table (after checking quickly that it wasn’t the one that kicked back).

“Jon and Spencer,” Ryan clarified, trailing his hand absently along a shelf of books. Four of the books purred, and six of them sent up happy little puffs of golden dust which settled in Ryan’s hair and on his shoulders. Brendon decided against telling him. “I mean, I thought you said that Spencer didn’t like you?”

“We only knew each other when we were five,” Brendon said, and then looked down, smiling, because it had been a surprise to him too, after all, the fierce, persistent way Spencer had made conversation with him all Saturday afternoon, talking about music and school and people they both knew, looking weirdly proud every time Brendon laughed. “I guess he changed his mind.”

“I still don’t like it,” Ryan said, huffing. “All of a sudden he wants to be your friend, and it’s just, it seems a bit odd. Also, his eyes are very blue, have you noticed? I knew an evil witch with very blue eyes once.” Brendon tuned out after a moment, because Ryan did tend to ramble for a while once he got started on people or things he had once known (and Brendon had begun to suspect, judging by the suspicious slant of Ryan’s mouth on occasion, that half of these stories were at the very least mildly fabricated), but he started listening soon enough to hear as Ryan concluded, in a huff, “—and anyway, I found you first,” and then turned bright red.

Brendon burst out laughing, and then he flung himself up out of the chair and went over to the record player in the corner, pulling out the first record he could find. He had noticed that it was generally what he felt like listening to, and sure enough a bright, cheerful melody came out, the rhythm tightening around Brendon’s spine and making his feet tap.

He went over to Ryan and grabbed at him, even as Ryan laughed and protested, whirling him around in a space that was hastily cleared as various books shimmied out of the way. He danced Ryan around the carpet, swinging his hips obnoxiously enough to make Ryan laugh harder, and he said, “You did, you did find me first.”

Ryan looked up at him, eyes bright, and Brendon grinned back at him, not slowing his pace. “I think it’s good, though,” he confided. “I was being a bit jealous. I think maybe you and me should try and talk to – I mean. Friends are good.”

“Yes,” Ryan agreed, softly, and Brendon released him.

“So be nice,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. _Try_ and sleep, won’t you?”

“Goodnight,” Ryan said, which was not any kind of answer at all, but Brendon just picked up his bag from where it was leaning against the counter and waved, closing the door tight behind him, knowing without checking that it would be locked.

Outside the bakery, Greta was just about to go inside. “Oh, hello, Brendon,” she said, smiling at him. “I just heard that you were working here.”

“The _gossip_ in this place,” Brendon said, rolling his eyes. “Seriously.”

“Gerard told me,” Greta said, eyes bright. “Do you like it? I’ve been meaning to stop in, but it’s just been so busy, lately.”

“I like it,” Brendon replied, and then asked, “Are you starting work already?”

“I slept all day,” Greta said, with a sigh. “I’m kind of behind. There’s all tomorrow’s goods to do, _and_ the Wentz’s wedding cake, of course—”

Brendon started. “Pete and Ashlee are getting married?”

“Oh!” Greta clapped her hand over her mouth, and looked at him sympathetically. “Did you not know?”

“No,” Brendon said, feeling a little like he’d been knocked over. “Nobody told me.”

“Oh,” Greta said, again. Her mouth twisted, and Brendon squirmed, wanting suddenly to be away, back in the safe warmth of the past two days. “Oh, I’m sorry, Bren—”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I don’t even know them that well.” (When he was ten, Pete had come over and babysat for him sometimes, and Brendon as a kid had thought Pete had hung the moon.) “Good luck with the cake.”

“Brendon,” Greta began, but Brendon had already climbed up on his bicycle and was riding away. It was shitty and self-indulgent of him, to still be worked up over this stuff, he thought, and Ryan had already been pretty amazing for him, but going home was still the worst part of any day, especially when it didn’t feel like any sort of home at all.

On Monday morning, it was very clear that Ryan _hadn’t_ slept, once again, and after about half an hour of the drowsiest conversation Brendon had ever been part of, he sent Ryan to his favourite armchair (Ryan refused to go through the back door to his bed) with the blanket to nap again. It was going to be a quiet day, anyway, Brendon knew; he doubted Spencer and Jon would stop by. The Wentz Wedding was sure to be something everyone in the town would be at.

He spent most of the day plucking away on the guitar Ryan kept in the corner of the shop, making up little melodies and things to please himself with. Sometimes he would hum along, but that seemed to make Ryan stir restlessly, as if he were about to wake, so Brendon stopped pretty soon. Ryan needed his sleep.

He hadn’t expected any customers at all, but around half past two, the chimes shrieked “WAKE UP, RYAN!” (Ryan grumbled in his sleep, flipping a rude gesture in their general direction) as Mikey Way sidled in the door. Brendon sat up from where he was sprawled across a second hand futon ( _once owned by Alexander The Great_ , the tag said, _but not the one you’re thinking of: $37_ ) in surprise; Mikey was the one person who had come through the door that Brendon would have bet good money on never coming back, and he still looked nervous, glancing around the place.

“Hey,” Brendon said. “What’s up?”

“Um,” Mikey said. “Can I come and sit down here? Pretty much everyone else is at the wedding.”

Brendon ignored the twinge in his chest and said, “Sure, come on,” drawing his legs up. He liked Mikey for no particular reason, liked the awkward, coltish way that Mikey moved, and his dark, serious eyes with his glasses slipping down his face. “Why aren’t you at the wedding?” Brendon asked, curious despite himself.

“Oh,” Mikey said, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking kind of embarrassed. He sat down on the futon, crossed his legs and faced Brendon, and Brendon moved so that they were comfortably close, their knees bumping, facing each other. “I don’t like crowds, much. Gee doesn’t either, but he’ll go when it’s a wedding, ‘cos they make him all happy. And then he cries.”

Brendon grinned. “I bet,” he said, because he did have a faint memory of Gerard getting teary at a wedding, a long time ago. “Your house a bit too lonely by yourself?”

“Yeah,” Mikey said. He looked down and shifted around uncomfortably for a few moments; then, he met Brendon’s eyes, took a deep breath, and burst out, “I think I’m going crazy.”

“What?” Brendon asked, blinking. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean, like,” Mikey began, sounding miserable. He stopped and looked down at his lap, twisting his hands together, and then drew a breath and continued, “I like. Gerard’s been doing a lot of painting recently, he, he likes those paints that he bought here – the colours and stuff. And at night, if I wake up after a – a bad dream or something, I keep thinking that I see the – the things he paints, they come in and talk to me, and cheer me up.”

Brendon couldn’t stop the smile creeping across his face. “What kind of things does Gerard paint?”

“Um, like, vampires, and werewolves, and people being killed by vampires and werewolves,” Mikey said, offhandedly, and then shook his head at Brendon’s horrified face. “Oh, but I mean, they’re not – they’re not mean or scary or anything, they’re all really friendly and happy and stuff.”

“Uh, okay,” Brendon said, after a moment. He took a breath and said, not quite sure how to explain things properly, or what Ryan wanted him to tell, “Look, I don’t think you’re crazy—”

“Do you have bad dreams a lot?” Ryan asked quietly, and Brendon and Mikey both jumped. Ryan was hovering nearby, looking half-awake but kind, and Mikey stared at him silently for a moment before apparently pulling himself together.

“Yeah,” he said. “I – almost every night.”

“Wow,” Ryan said. “That sucks.” Brendon ducked his head, smiling, but Mikey didn’t seem to find the everyday slang at odds with the rest of Ryan’s appearance at all.

“Um, yeah,” Mikey said. “Gerard’s good at – at making them go away, and I think, so are the paintings, except for that’s probably not real, but we can’t, we can’t make them stop.”

“The paintings are fine,” Ryan said, firmly. “You’re not going crazy. Don’t worry about them. If they want to talk to you, it’s probably just ‘cos they like you and think you’re cool.” (Brendon was almost sure that he imagined the pointed look Ryan flicked at him, but he glared just to make sure.) “But,” Ryan said, “bad dreams are really horrible. I get them, sometimes. I’m sorry you do too.”

Mikey shrugged. “Mom says I’ll grow out of them,” he said.

“Probably,” Ryan agreed. Then he went out the back and came back with tea and biscuits and a story about how, when he was living in New York, he was almost _sure_ that he saw Batman one time, and Mikey perked up (once he had explained – a little condescendingly – that Batman didn’t _live_ in New York City, and it had been decided that possibly he was on holiday, or just on loan) enough to discuss it properly.

It was almost four when Mikey finally said, regretfully, “I should go. Mom made me promise I’d come to say congratulations to Pete and Ashlee at one stage.”

“Okay,” Brendon said. “It was nice talking to you, dude. You should come by again.”

“I will,” Mikey agreed, brightening. “Bye, Brendon. Bye, Ryan.”

“Wait a sec,” Ryan said, and disappeared into the darkest corner of the shop, rummaging around in a bookshelf. He returned holding a small wooden box with a painted flower on the lid carefully in his hands, and Brendon recognised it immediately – though he couldn’t say how – as a music box. “You like music,” Ryan said, “don’t you?”

Mikey flushed, looking at the box with poorly disguised longing. “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t have any—”

“This thing just won’t sell,” Ryan said sadly, looking down at it. “I think it’s pretty, but it has a habit of getting stuck and not opening for most people. You’d be doing me a favour, taking it off my hands. It’s just taking up space.”

“Um, well,” Mikey said, and pushed his glasses up again, looking flustered. “Thank you, then. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Ryan replied, and Mikey got up and waved a little awkwardly, walking away.

At the door, he paused and looked back. “How d’you know it’ll open for me, if it gets stuck?” he asked. “I’m not very strong.”

“I have a feeling,” Ryan said.

Weirdly, Brendon discovered that he didn’t really mind that much when Jon and Spencer dropped around anymore. Spencer looked at Brendon with a weird, fiercely intent sort of gaze, and Brendon got strange feelings now and again that Spencer was trying to adopt him or something of the sort. If it had been out of pity, then Brendon would hate him immediately but he could sort of tell that it wasn’t that simple.

“Maybe he just likes you,” Ryan said, and Brendon ducked his head and grinned.

It was strangely easy, in any case, to accommodate them into their lives, and it did not seem such a huge change as Brendon had feared. The days drifted past in a gentle sort of daze, and Brendon felt a little like he was eight years old and in the middle of his summer holidays, again: nothing happened, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and time seemed to stretch on forever.

There were highlights every now and then, moments that stood out. On his sixth day working in the shop, the teapot wasn’t in its usual spot on the counter, and when Brendon asked where it was Ryan only waved vaguely towards the door that led out the back of the shop. Brendon stopped and asked, carefully, “You don’t mind me going in there?”

“No, ‘course not,” Ryan said, absently. “Just don’t knock over the thing in the sink, it’s still brewing.”

The backdoor opened up onto a long, dark passage, and Brendon started down it a little uncertainly, not sure what to expect. The first door he tried opened up onto a huge room, far, far bigger than the outside of the shop should have allowed, and inside it was lined with shelves, going all the way around and then up onto a second, higher platform. There were more shelves in the middle of the room, and then a huge table piled with all kinds of books and parchments and what looked like a chemistry kit, and just in front of it a gigantic globe of the world. It looked like a library from a science fiction movie. Brendon wanted desperately to go and explore, but he was on a _mission_ (it was important, too, Ryan was fostering a horrible caffeine addiction in him), and it felt a little too nosy – or even dangerous – without Ryan there to explore with him. He closed the door.

The next room was comparatively tiny, and also lined with shelves, upon which hundreds of bottles and jars sat with dusty little labels in front of them; the room after that was a bathroom, with a huge, comfortable looking bath and a golden shower head; after that, there was a small series of rooms that Brendon hesitantly called living rooms, simply by virtue of them having various items of comfortable furniture in them. One of them had a neglected looking piano, but Brendon passed it reluctantly by.

When he finally opened the door leading into what was unmistakably a kitchen, he was a little taken aback by how normal it looked. There was a fridge, a rickety table and chairs and some kitchen counters, and apart from the large vat of smelly, colourless liquid sitting in the sink the whole thing seemed ordinary. The most magical thing there was a bowl of persimmons, even though it wasn’t the season for them. Brendon grabbed two and the teapot from off the counter (he didn’t bother filling it with hot water, though he did take the pot of sugar to put on the counter, because Ryan invariably magicked it too bitter), and then wound his way back up to the shop at the front.

“Dude,” he said, “Your house is _amazing_ ,” and chucked a persimmon at Ryan’s head. Ryan dropped it, of course, and then Brendon laughed at his crappy hand eye coordination, and everything seemed magical and real at once, which was how Brendon liked it best.

A few days later, Ryan insisted that Brendon take a day off, despite Brendon telling him that he’d _rather_ be at the shop than at home. In the end, Brendon left feeling a little mournful, and only after writing his number on four or five post it notes and leaving it around the shop, telling Ryan to call or text if he needed anything.

He spent his day wandering aimlessly around the house. He was just about to start half-heartedly cleaning the kitchen (which has gotten really, ridiculously dusty) when he was distracted by a tapping on the window. When he turned, a red-breasted robin was peering at him through the glass, and Brendon moved wide-eyed towards it, opening the window uncertainly.

There was a tiny sliver of paper attached to its leg, and Brendon unfurled it to read, _where’s the sugar again?_

He laughed and gave up on any attempt at a day off, riding his bike back to Ryan’s shop. For a moment he wondered again, still a little unsure, if Ryan would be annoyed, but when he walked in Ryan glanced up and looked so grateful that Brendon stopped worrying at all.

The next day, Gerard came in, a little awkward but mostly smiling hugely, his eyes bright. “Guys,” he said, “I don’t know what it is about that – that music box that you gave Mikey, but he hasn’t had a bad dream, since.”

Ryan and Brendon exchanged a swift glance, Brendon trying not to giggle, Ryan looking extremely smug. “That’s good to hear,” Ryan said, and Gerard laughed out loud, short and exuberant.

“I know there’s something about it,” he said. “Won’t you let me—”

“No, it was a gift,” Ryan said, and then paused, considering. “But if you would like, there’s a ceiling that needs painting.”

The shop was closed for the next week, but Brendon, Jon and Spencer still came to help out, painting where Gerard told them to, while Ryan wandered about and made sure that all the items in the shop were safely covered with white sheets (he’d tried to help out with the painting at first, too, but had been soon consigned to floor duty, and he was hopeless at staying in the lines).

Gerard painted stories out across the huge ceiling: vampires skulking around corners to spy wistfully on unicorns frolicking on green fields (and, when Ryan murmured something to him, Brendon riding bareback on one of them, face thrown up to the sun); an arid desert, dry and bare of life except where a collection of small, inquisitive desert mice were watching Ryan read a book, his feet in the air, apparently unconcerned by the surroundings; across one stretch the green fields of the unicorns faded into a dark black night with a million stars, and cycling through them Jon with Spencer on his handlebars. Other parts of it were just bursts of colour, suns exploding and raining down silver ash, whole lifetimes scrawling across the ceiling. Gerard judged it “a bit more cheerful than I usually do”, and Spencer said uncertainly, “Does it look kind of… alive, to you?” Ryan only smiled.

The night after the painting was done, Jon, Spencer, Gerard and Brendon stayed up late with Ryan, talking until the early hours of the morning. Ryan had drifted away at some point, probably to bed, and Brendon was exhausted; he only felt a little bit guilty when instead of heading home, he snuck down the corridor, half-heartedly looking for Ryan’s bedroom (surely he wouldn’t mind Brendon stealing a little bit of space). Instead, he found one of the living rooms, and he sank down gratefully on the couch there, rolling over and falling asleep almost instantly.

In the morning, Ryan didn’t seem to notice anything odd about the way Brendon emerged, just passed him a piece of toast and launched into a grumbling complaint about how there was a spot of paint on his hand and he couldn’t remember the right spell to get rid of it, goddamnit.

Brendon propped his chin on his hand, considering. “Did you try soap?” he asked, and Ryan’s eyes lit up.

“Oh my God, _right_ ,” Ryan said, beaming.

It became habit to spend the night on Ryan’s couch. Brendon felt a little guilty about it – Ryan was too absent-minded to ever notice properly, and it felt sort of like he was invading Ryan’s home – but it was so much more preferable to his own lonely, unfriendly house that he’d push aside such guilt for the sake of a comfortable night’s sleep, and a little less loneliness.

It was Spencer, of course, who finally picked up on it. He’d started coming down to the shop every day for his lunchbreak, and they all ate together, texting Jon to see if he could make it down, too. Brendon liked it because more and more, despite himself, he was really enjoying Spencer and Jon’s company, and also because it reminded Ryan of such novel concepts as regular meal times.

One lunchtime, though, when Jon and Ryan were talking kind of lazily about a book they’d both read, laughing and distracted, Spencer swallowed his mouthful of pasta and said, “You know, I always seem to see your bike outside the shop.”

“I work here,” Brendon reminded him, raising his eyebrows.

“No, I mean, it’s always there,” Spencer said. “When I pass by for the early shifts in the morning, or go home late, or—”

Brendon swallowed hard, pulled his posture straight. “I’m not – not going through his shit or whatever you think,” he said, coldly. “I just—”

“No, God, Brendon!” Spencer interrupted, looking horrified. “I wasn’t saying you were, I just – Ryan doesn’t really notice when people need help sometimes, huh? Maybe you need to—”

“Need to what, Spencer?” Brendon asked, tiredly. “Fix things up with my parents? With the _town_? They don’t even know who I _am_ when they’re not hating me.”

Spencer’s mouth twisted downwards. “I know,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry.” Brendon shrugged, and Spencer looked straight at him and said, “They will, though.” Brendon raised an eyebrow, and Spencer looked a little suspicious. “Anyway,” he mumbled. “I’m glad I do,” and Brendon blinked at him in astonishment, startled warmth spreading in his chest.

That night, Ryan flipped the sign on the door to _closed_ and then turned around, held out his hand. “Come on,” he said. “I wanna show you something.”

Brendon walked over to him, a little bewildered, and then, when Ryan waved it impatiently, took Ryan’s hand. Ryan’s fingers curled warm and long around Brendon’s, and he led Brendon through the back door of the shop and into the dark passage beyond.

“Library,” he said, and the door opened without either of them touching it. Brendon looked at Ryan, confused, but Ryan continued onward without clarifying, said, “Storeroom,” to the narrow one with the cupboards and then, “Bathroom.”

“Lounge,” Ryan said, “Lounge, lounge, this used to be a music room but it got a bit cluttered and I think my guitars are somewhere else now – you know the kitchen…” He turned right when they got to the kitchen, going on where Brendon hadn’t been before, and the doors flew open as they passed.

“My study,” Ryan said, as they passed yet another room lined with bookshelves and containing a messy desk. “Another bathroom, I think I forgot I had already made one – my bedroom, here.” (It was a small, bare room, with an equally small bed, and for some reason the lack of anything in it made Brendon suddenly sad. It looked like Ryan barely used it.)

“And here,” Ryan said, stopping in front of the last closed door. He opened it, looking suddenly a little shy. “Your room.”

Brendon swallowed hard. Then he took a step inside. There was a large wardrobe (“I can help you move your stuff over,” Ryan said, low and anxious in his ear) and the floor was covered in thick, soft-looking carpet; there were three empty bookshelves along one wall, and a huge rack with room for CDs and records. There was a desk (“I know it’s small,” Ryan said quickly, “but if you want, I can make another study thing, I just thought bedrooms that are too big can be a bit cold,”), and a four poster bed that looked like something from a storybook, huge and comfortable and made up with a dark red quilt cover and sheets, gold threading in them (“I found them in a Chinese marketplace,” Ryan said, still uncertain, “They – they remind me of you, sorta, I haven’t had anything else to use them for before,”).

The real thing that got Brendon’s attention, though, was the ceiling. When he looked up, his breath caught in his throat. It was a night sky, a little like the one Gerard had painted out in the main area of the shop, but different in the way that it felt _real_. The stars twinkled and shone, and dark clouds passed across it. Brendon could start to pick out unfamiliar constellations, nothing like any he’d ever seen before.

“Um,” Ryan said. “It’s pretty stupid really, you don’t have to – I just, Spencer said that maybe, and you seem like you’d like stars – I’m not gonna like, force you to live with me or anything, though.”

Brendon turned around and threw himself at Ryan, hanging off his neck and clinging on tight. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and Ryan ducked his head and breathed against Brendon’s neck.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/11.png)pencer could hear the music two shops away, drifting out into the early evening, and he turned to raise an eyebrow at Jon. Jon grinned back at him and then hummed along cheerfully, _don’t know how lucky you are, boy_ and Spencer laughed for no real reason other than it was Friday and it was good to have friends to be visiting, good to be alive in the slow days and slower nights of Thornton Hill.

The door was unlocked, even though it was an hour past the time when Brendon usually shut it up. When they stepped inside, they were greeted with the sight of Ryan and Brendon sprawled out spread-eagled on a cleared patch of floor, eyes closed and breathing slowly, while the record player blasted cheerfully beside them. Brendon was mouthing along with the words quietly.

“Dudes?” Spencer asked, raising his voice to be heard above the music. Ryan frowned and made a shushing gesture but didn’t say anything; Brendon grinned, opening his eyes, and sat up.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Sorry, he hasn’t heard much of our music, apparently.”

“SHUSH,” Ryan said, looking cross. “I’m _listening_!”

Jon laughed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he lay down on the ground, folding his arms behind his head and kicking his legs out on the floor. Spencer laughed down at them all, but didn’t resist when Brendon crooked a finger, fitting himself into the last stretch of space and closing his eyes.

It was peaceful, lying there and listening to one of his favourite albums, but after a while Spencer’s mind started wandering, and he found himself thinking about what Brendon had said: _much of our music_. Which, now that Spencer thought about it, was a pretty weird way to phrase something. Maybe if Ryan had very clearly come from another country, but his accent was definitely American, if a little stilted; maybe if Brendon was the secret fifth member of The Beatles, but Spencer discarded that idea without fanfare after giggling about it for a few minutes.

When the album was done, he sat up before Brendon could reach for _Yellow Submarine_ , and said, “Hey, can we take a break for a moment?”

“Oh, _please_ ,” Brendon said, even as Ryan looked disgruntled. “We’ve been listening since like… ten in the morning? Seriously, Ryan, you fucking perfectionist.”

“It’s really good!” Ryan protested. “I want to hear it all in order!”

“Just stop for a little while,” Brendon told him, propping his chin on his knees. “For me. _Please_.”

“Well,” Ryan said, folding his arms. “Well, fine.” Brendon widened his eyes at Ryan’s annoyed face, and the two of them stared at each other for a moment before they both burst out laughing at exactly the same moment.

“Freaks,” Jon said, affectionately, and Brendon grinned.

“Hey,” Spencer said, refusing to be sidetracked. “What did you mean, Ryan hasn’t heard much of our music?”

Brendon’s face went suddenly serious, and he exchanged a look with Ryan. Ryan looked a little embarrassed and Brendon said, “You totally forgot they didn’t know just now, huh?”

“Maybe,” Ryan said defensively, and then added quickly, “You did, too!”

“Um,” Jon said, looking from one to the other, and Spencer frowned. “Can we be mysterious after Spence and I know what’s going on?”

“It’s kind of a hard thing to say,” Brendon said. He looked at Ryan, as if searching for confirmation, and Ryan nodded, and made a little gesture like _go on_. “Um, okay, so first off, Ryan’s not… from here.”

“Thornton Hill?” Jon asked, a little bewildered. “We know that.”

“No,” Brendon said. “No, I mean he’s not from this _world_.”

Spencer blinked. “Uh,” he said, “is that meant to mean something to you, Brendon? ‘Cos I gotta tell you, it doesn’t make anything any clearer for me.”

“Brendon means,” Ryan said, softly, “That I was born in… not another universe, because we share this one, but – it’s like, a different fabric to this world. I can’t explain it properly.”

Jon asked, slowly, “What is it?” and Brendon smiled and looked down, a strange mix of awe and gratitude on his face.

“Faerie,” Ryan said.

For a moment, nobody spoke, the shop quiet and still, except for the sound of the wind whistling outside. Spencer had been sure, he thought, that the night was a warm one, one of the last nights of summer, nothing moving.

Then Jon said, “So you’re—”

“A magician,” Ryan told him, and did a funny little shrug, like, _what can you do?_

“Um,” Jon said, uncertainly, and Spencer sighed, pushing his hair back behind his ear.

“I don’t know what you two are doing right now,” he said. “But there’s no such thing as magic.”

Brendon looked horrified and he raised his hands and clapped, deliberately. Jon snorted, covering his mouth and giggling a little hysterically. Ryan rolled his eyes.

“You know that’s a made up story, right, Brendon?” he asked, smiling a little crookedly. “J.M. Barrie didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“I was just making sure,” Brendon said. “Can’t hurt to be careful. We don’t want you swooning on us.”

“Okay, then,” Ryan drawled, and Spencer looked at the easy way they interacted, the way Brendon seemed to be rubbing off on Ryan with his patterns of speech, and wondered exactly what kind of joke they were playing. Ryan looked straight at him, as if he had heard it – god, Spencer thought, now he was just freaking himself out – and looked suddenly serious.

“There is,” Ryan said, “Such a thing.”

Spencer shook his head. “This isn’t a very funny joke,” he said. “You guys should have like, gotten someone to dress up as a ghost or something, this isn’t even remotely believable.”

“A ghost?” Ryan repeated, sounding interested, and Brendon cut over him quickly with,

“ _No_ , Ryan.”

“Fine, then,” Ryan said, sounding put out. “What about how I showed you?”

“We’re all in t-shirts, it’ll be freezing,” Brendon said, and seriously, this joke didn’t even make _sense_. “Just – oh, I know, what about the paintings on the ceiling?”

“Oh!” Ryan said, looking pleased. “Yeah, good idea.” Then he pointed up at the ceiling and twisted his wrist a little awkwardly.

Spencer followed his pointing hand automatically, and then blinked, rubbing his eyes with his hands, blinking again, trying to look properly and see anything except what was currently going on. The pictures on the ceiling were _moving_ , Jon pedalling his bike across the sky, the unicorns breaking into a gallop, Ryan swaying his feet slightly in the desert.

“Oh my God,” Jon said, quietly.

“Yeah,” Brendon said. He sounded happy again, the way he did when Spencer laughed at one of his jokes, or when Ryan was sleepy and would fall half-asleep leaning on Brendon, nuzzling sort of absently at Brendon’s hair. Spencer stared, mouth dry, and then mumbled something to himself that even he couldn’t distinguish, couldn’t understand what he could possibly say in this situation.

“Oh my God,” Jon said again. He sounded a little breathless, like he was caught between laughter and fear. “Are you – you’re really doing that, Ryan?”

“Yes,” Ryan said, a little dreamy. “I like the unicorns best, Gerard painted them well. Except that one there, look, his back leg’s too short,” and sure enough one of the unicorns was hopping after the others with a slightly annoyed expression on its horsey face.

“This is amazing,” Jon breathed. Spencer watched out of the corner of his eye, unable to look away properly from the ceiling, as Jon rolled over onto his stomach and beamed at Ryan. “This is – I can’t believe you can _do_ that. I can’t believe it’s real, that—”

“Magic,” Brendon said, soft. “And just when we thought there were no more wonders.” Spencer wondered absently if he was the only one who heard _I_ when Brendon said _we_.

“Well,” Spencer said, sitting up. “It’s not _real_.”

Brendon, Jon and Ryan looked at him as one, foreheads crinkled as if they didn’t really get it. “What?” Jon said.

“I mean, it’s pretty awesome,” Spencer said, suddenly feeling a lot more cheerful and balanced. “But you’ve got some sort of light thing going on, or a projector somewhere around the place. It’s not _magic_.”

“Um,” Ryan said. He twitched his finger and most of the furniture floated up halfway into the air.

“Hidden kind of pulley system,” Spencer said. Ryan twitched his finger again and Spencer floated up to join them. He folded his arms and glared down at them. “Weird spatial illusion,” he said, “Because I still feel like I’m sitting on the ground.”

“Only, you’re sitting on _air_ ,” Brendon pointed out, sounding like he was trying not to laugh.

“No, but I am feeling a little dizzy,” Spencer said. “Put me down?”

  
[   
](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/184955.html#04)   


He landed gently, and Ryan said, “I’m not – spatial illusions, Spence? What _are_ they?”

“Don’t know,” Spencer said. “You’re obviously some kind of mad scientific genius.”

Brendon took one look at Ryan and finally burst out laughing, falling half into Jon’s lap and cackling gleefully into his knee. “Oh my God, Spencer,” he said. “I love you. Please continue.”

“There’s no need to treat me like _I’m_ the crazy one,” Spencer said. “You guys are the gullible idiots here.”

“Urm,” Ryan said, and clapped his hands. A flock of brightly coloured, exotic birds appeared, swooping around the room and then bursting into green and purple flames that matched their plumage.

Spencer waited patiently for the fires to burn down and then said, “More of the projection stuff, or possibly you’ve got some special effects technology in here. Did you use to work in Hollywood?”

Ryan’s mouth was twitching. He waved his hand again and a steaming plate of hot chips appeared in front of Spencer. “You can eat them,” he said.

“Sure I can,” Spencer said, rolling his eyes and trying to ignore the scent of chips floating up towards him. “Excuse me if I’m not going to put my hand through a hologram for your amusement, though.”

Brendon started wheezing, he was laughing so hard. Jon was grinning delightedly, the way he did when Spencer was being particularly moronic and Jon was enjoying this display of ineptitude a lot. Spencer did not like having that look levelled at him, especially when he was clearly the only person in the room who had not gone utterly _crazy_.

They didn’t stay for much longer after that. Spencer extracted himself with the last remains of his dignity and Jon followed after him, giggling stupidly, and apparently over the fright Ryan’s clever tricks had provoked in him. “There’s no such thing as magic!” he called, as they left, and then he and Jon walked home in the dark together.

“Um, dude?” Jon said, when they were nearly home. “Did you notice—”

“No such thing as magic!” Spencer repeated firmly, and ignored the way he appeared to be walking two feet above the ground.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/12.png)iving in Ryan’s house, Brendon thought, was pretty much the coolest thing in the world, but occasionally it did have its shocks. On the third day of living there, the morning after Ryan had – attempted to – tell Spencer and Jon about the whole magic thing, Brendon was in the middle of a shower when Ryan burst through the door.

“Dude!” Brendon said, grabbing the curtain and twisting it around him, even though it was gross and cold and uncomfortable. “Kind of naked, here!”

“What was that noise?” Ryan asked, bright-eyed and a little breathless. “Was that – the music—”

“I didn’t hear any music,” Brendon told him, frowning a little bit. He really wanted to finish his shower.

“The _singing_ ,” Ryan said impatiently. “That was you, right? I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave any spells lying about.”

“Oh,” Brendon said, and turned red. “Yeah, sorry, I sing in the shower, can’t train myself out of it.”

“Oh my God,” Ryan said. “Oh my God, seriously, wash the shampoo out of your hair and then come quick.”

Brendon blinked but after Ryan darted back out the door, moved to do as he was told, hastily washing the shampoo out and getting out of the shower, dressing quickly. Ryan had sounded so urgent, and Brendon found himself wondering if something was wrong – but then why ask about the singing? In any case, he hurried, because he didn’t think he’d ever seen Ryan so animated before.

Ryan was waiting out in the hall for him when he emerged, rubbing at his damp hair, and he turned his biggest, brightest smile on Brendon. Brendon swallowed hard and said, “What’s up?”

“You never told me you could _sing_ ,” Ryan said, bouncing on the heels of his feet.

“I – I didn’t know I could?” Brendon said, uncertainly. “I seriously only sing in the shower – and I used to in the choir, sometimes, but only if someone was sick.”

“Brendon,” Ryan said. “Your voice, can you – just sing me anything, okay, just, just, please?”

Brendon stared at him for a moment, feeling a little self-conscious, and then he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin: because it was Ryan, because it was his best friend, because Ryan seemed weirdly and incomprehensibly pleased every day that Brendon was there but this was one of the rare times he actually asked Brendon for something. Brendon swallowed back the lump in his throat and opened his mouth, sang.

It was nonsense, mostly, because he didn’t have a clear tune in his head; he started half-heartedly working his way through _Tonight, Tonight_ , letting himself go on the chorus, but then he forgot the words of the second verse instead and transitioned into _her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill_ , slipped into the chorus of _All You Need Is Love_ because that was the song that had made Ryan smile the most last night, wailed a little bit of the Counting Crows, because he couldn’t not. When he opened his eyes Ryan was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, chin propped on his knees, smiling in a gentle sort of way up at Brendon.

“Yes,” Ryan said, when Brendon stumbled to an abrupt halt. “Yes, you can sing.”

Brendon stared at him, wide-eyed, and Ryan added, “I _knew_ you had a little bit of Faerie in you.”

Brendon spent the rest of the day being dragged around from room to room by Ryan (“Uh, dude, shouldn’t we open the shop at some—” “No!”) while Ryan set up strange, delicate looking instruments. Brendon blinked at them in disbelief and said, “I don’t, I don’t understand. Am I going to do magic?”

“No, I am,” Ryan told him. “But I need your voice to do it, I can’t sing the words properly.” He looked suddenly anxious. “You don’t mind doing it, do you? Magic’s a dangerous kind of thing, and I don’t want to force you to—”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Brendon cut in quickly. He grinned, felt it take over his whole face. “I just – I’m glad to help, Ryan, I really am. I just don’t understand how it works.”

“It’s like – I’ll tell you what to sing,” Ryan said. “And you sing it, and it’ll be – if I’m concentrating at the same time, the magic should work. There’s a lot of music in Faerie,” he added, looking over his shoulder as he fiddled with a dial on what looked like a brass compass with thin, delicate hands weaving and wavering over the metal. “People use it all the time, it’s a huge field of study. I did a bit of it, with guitar, but mostly it’s things you have to do with your voice, and I can’t sing.” He shrugged, but Brendon thought beneath it he looked a little hurt, a little disappointed. Brendon resolved to hear him try, one day.

When Ryan was done, he handed Brendon a piece of paper. Brendon had been imagining and dreading words in some strange language, weird syllables that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce, but in fact it looked strangely readable, if nonsensical: _sunk the glow & drowned in candleswans, genius comes along in little deaths and musical beds and you spun stars on fingernails_. Ryan hummed a tune at him and Brendon hummed it back, grinning at each other, until a little while later he judged himself ready to go.

He was stupidly anxious when they started, but the tune was a nice one, and he got into the swing of it, letting his voice swell and fill the house, standing in the centre of the library. Everything felt realer than usual, more intense, the hair on Brendon’s arms standing on end, and he breathed in sharply and sang, and sang, and sang, and the air in front of them was shimmering, the stars filling the room, stories and songs and histories filling the air in front of them and dancing past, like ghosts or fairytales.

Finally Ryan nodded through the haze of magic, and Brendon let the last note die. It took a moment for him to regain his breath; when he opened his eyes, Ryan was smiling at him.

“What did it do?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Ryan told him. “You’re not – not magic, so even with me helping, we couldn’t really achieve anything with nursery rhymes and such, not here.”

Brendon looked down and tried not to feel too crestfallen. Ryan crossed the floor to him and curled an arm around his shoulders, pressing into his side. He stared out across the room as if he could still see the glow of dancing shapes, of magic.

“So it was pointless,” Brendon said.

“Yes,” Ryan agreed. “But wasn’t it beautiful?”

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/13.png)on thought that maybe he was just a little too used to habits; living by them, falling into them, getting accustomed to new ones. Something as strange and unbelievable as magic should by rights have shaken them up; but instead it was just another thing to settle into, Ryan’s magic just another part of him, and by extension, Jon’s life.

It was certainly a cool habit to be used to, anyway. Jon would come by in the afternoons and Ryan and Brendon would be arguing lazily, or listening to music, or maybe just one of them there, the other having disappeared for a little while (“You don’t ever get sick of each other?” Spencer asked one time, laughing as Brendon dragged Ryan around the shop in a clumsy waltz, and Ryan just smiled, eyes warm and secretive). After a while Spencer would join them, too, and it became natural to hang out there, to only return home late at night, or not at all, crashing on Ryan’s couches or in hammocks that Ryan would magic out of nowhere (“Hidden system of pulleys,” Spencer insisted, who continued to maintain that magic wasn’t real and that Ryan was simply a very, very clever inventor).

Habits that were more unusual than others, sure, but habits nonetheless. After a while, they all got a little bit used to the things that happened when they snooped around the shop and touched things that shouldn’t be touched, like the time Jon got accidentally transported to a desert oasis and spent an hour or so wandering around aimlessly, or when Brendon blew experimentally on a tin whistle and spent the rest of the week warbling like a lark. The things that happened to Spencer officially Did Not Happen at all, but Spencer adapted too, enough that he could tell Brendon off for agreeing (persistently, and with an ever optimistic grin) to be in some of Ryan’s more experimental spells.

(“Didn’t I _tell_ you so?” he cried, and Brendon’s hair was blue for a month.)

Occasionally Ryan amused them by tricking Spencer into leaving with some small enchantment on him, so that his scarf changed colour every few hours (the days slowly but surely edging into autumn), or that there was a small nest of birds in his hair the day he went for dinner with his family.

“It’s a sort of magic all on its own,” Ryan would say sometimes, watching with his chin propped on his hand as Spencer railed at the three of them about dormant electrical currents and wind and tide patterns.

On Sundays, they closed the shop, at Brendon’s insistence that Ryan couldn’t be open _all_ the time. They used up the last month of summer in the best way they can think of – going outside, wandering through the hills and countryside surrounding Thornton Hill, teaching Ryan the stupid little things he didn’t seem to know anything about, like how to play Frisbee or dive bomb into the lake. Mostly the days were as normal as anything could be around Ryan (though magical things inevitably happened, much as Spencer tried to ignore them: after Ryan touched it, their Frisbee never got stuck in a tree again, and after his first swim in the lake there was an inexplicable growth of lotus blossoms). Ryan would sometimes talk them into helping him collect mushrooms and other potion ingredients, and in exchange he’d tell them stories about gnomes and sprites and other “fairytales”, Spencer would say – “Facts,” Ryan corrected, grinning.

Jon liked being the four of them maybe more than anything that had ever happened to him before. It was like a tiny secret that he carried with him everywhere he went, the knowledge that at the end of a day taking easy, boring shots with a camera and eyes that longed to do more, he could walk in a door and be seized and danced around the room to _The Way You Make Me Feel_ —

(Ryan frowned, watching Brendon twirl Jon under his arm, and then paused the stereo, said, “I don’t get it. Your expressions make no sense. Why would knocking someone off their feet be a good thing? It sounds kind of mean."

Jon started laughing and Spencer grinned, said, "I would have thought you'd have more trouble understanding 'you really turn me on'."

Brendon turned red. "Oh, no," he said. "We've already listened to most of Prince, so, been there, done that.")

—or coaxed into making a cake, because Brendon and Ryan had already burned their first three attempts, and they were too hungry to wait for Spencer to arrive—

(Cooking with Ryan was always a dangerous experience. “Brendon,” Jon said, glaring, his arms full of ingredients and foot propping open the door of the fridge, “If you could just _help_ me carry some of this stuff, I’m about to drop the eggs—”

“If _you_ could just do it in two _trips_ , I’m trying to turn the goddamn oven on,” Brendon countered, and Ryan glanced up from where he was studying the recipe book with a look of confusion.

“Oh, hey, let me help,” he said, and before Jon could open his mouth Ryan twitched a finger and all the ingredients floated up into the air and began to drift leisurely towards the counter, which was all very well, except that Jon went with them, uselessly kicking at the air and bumping his head on the ceiling.)

—or being forced to sit and comfort a fretful Ryan, because Brendon had disappeared at lunchtime and wasn’t back, only to open the door later that night to a guilty looking Brendon holding a tiny black kitten.

(Ryan glared at it and sneezed deliberately. He said, coldly, “You know, all that stuff about familiars is rubbish.”

Brendon said, cheerful and unrepentant, “Who said anything about a familiar? He’s so _cute_!”

In the end, despite Ryan’s protests and (feigned) allergies, the kitten was promptly adopted and spent the evening being stared at by Brendon and Jon as it wandered around and bumped into furniture. Ryan was grimly pleased when he got his way on one aspect, at least – despite Brendon, Spencer and Jon’s attempts to give it a _nice_ name, in the end Ryan’s name was the one that stuck, and The Thing was a cheerful albeit accident prone addition to the household.

Brendon insisted he was, anyway, even if he did spend most of his time at Greta’s, where no one would forget to feed or cuddle him. All things – kittens included – had a habit of getting lost in Ryan’s endless corridors.)

Of course, it was stupid to imagine that everyone in Thornton Hill but them would continue to ignore Ryan forever, and eventually people began to drift into the shop, tentative, and then steadily growing more confidence. At first Jon surprised himself by how prickly he felt about such things, how uncomfortable, but then Spencer murmured something to him, jerking his head in Brendon’s direction, and they were suddenly much more preoccupied with keeping Brendon’s hackles down to worry about their own place in Ryan’s thoughts. Really, though, it became pretty clear that they needn’t have worried, as Ryan was mostly hopeless at making friends still (when Greta came around one day with a cake and a smile, Ryan tried to pay her before Brendon could shove him quickly to the side and laugh, saying, “Sorry, we’re still training him,”) and seemed anyway happy with the way things were.

Jon couldn’t help but be glad, jealousy aside, by the way Ryan worked his quiet influence on the town, even though he sucked at actually talking to people. The shop soon became a regular visiting point of many, if not ever exactly busy, and Ryan made things better in small, cheerful ways that made Spencer smile his great smile, the one that lit up his whole face, and that made Brendon reach out slowly, learning to talk to the people their own age, if not the rest of the town.

Pete began to drop in with books he thought Ryan might like, after spending an hour one day talking intently about Hemingway and J.D. Salinger with Ryan (“Trust him to be up to date on _that_ particular aspect of modern culture,” Spencer said dryly), and Greta – despite all Ryan’s quirks – took a great and cheekily delighted liking to him, dropping by frequently with Katie Kay smiling enigmatically at her elbow.

Ryan seemed, more than anything, a little bewildered by all the attention, but after a while he began to warm to them, and on Greta’s birthday she woke up to a bluebird on her window singing cheerfully, a tiny package at its feet. She wore the brooch it contained (a brilliant blue feather attached to a pin) with nearly everything she owned, and afterwards people began to notice that Greta was often there At The Right Place, At The Right Time; when the youngest Kennerty boy was about to upset a wedding cake, or at the exact moment to snap up the last jar of raspberry preserve on sale.

William came in one Saturday afternoon in the last days of August, ducking his head where the ceiling sloped and perching on one of the stools, smiling at the three of them and draping himself easily across the counter. “Seeing as you three seem to have stolen Jon from me,” he said, narrowing his eyes and grinning at the same time, “I figure I’ll just have to come here if I ever want to talk to him,” but he spent as much time giggling with Spencer and singing old one hit wonders with Brendon as he did talking to Jon.

Ryan always seemed a little distracted around William, Jon thought, but when he asked, Ryan shook his head and just said, quietly, “He reminds me of someone I knew, once.” After a week of William stopping in, Ryan gave him a small amulet on a leather chain, and said, “I think you might need this,” before disappearing.

William headed back up to the city after that for university, and Jon waited with some small amount of dread and sadness for the inevitable phone call in which William sounded tired and dispirited about his latest relationship. The thing with William, Jon thought, wasn’t so much that he fell for the wrong guys, as it was that the wrong guys fell for _him_.

When William did call, though, he sounded more puzzled than anything else. “No one’s hit on me for _ages_ ,” he said, laughing, although there was a little bit of annoyance underneath it. It was probably the longest stretch of time William had gone without a date, Jon thought, and he wasn’t entirely sure that it was a bad thing – especially when William called a few days later and talked in a hushed and cautiously, brilliantly happy tone about finally being approached by This Guy, You Should Meet Him, I Can’t Even—.

“His name’s Gabe, apparently,” Jon finished the next day, telling the story to the guys in the shop (Spencer having been kept up with all of William’s bad luck over the year, and Brendon and Ryan recently filled in). Spencer raised his eyebrows in a way that indicated he was vaguely interested, Brendon warbled something about true love waiting, and Ryan smiled.

Mikey brought his best friend around, a tiny, defiant looking kid called Frank, and told Ryan, “He gets sick a lot. Can you do anything to help?”

More than anyone else in the town, Mikey seemed to have caught on without being told that there was something more than met the eye to Ryan – probably the music box and the restless paintings were fair clues, Jon thought. Ryan looked sorry when Mikey asked, though, and explained haltingly that he wasn’t a doctor, and that there were certain things he couldn’t – “I mean, you shouldn’t mess with nature,” he said, quietly, and Frank and Mikey looked very understanding and also very disappointed.

Across the room, Brendon started sending Ryan crestfallen looks, and after a few moments of pointedly ignoring them—

(Spencer nudged Jon, whispered, “I give him five minutes before he caves.”

“Oh man, you underestimate the power of Brendon’s pout,” Jon told him quietly. “It’ll be one minute, tops.”)

—he finally sighed and bent beneath the counter, producing a ball of dark, warm looking wool, and handed it to Frank. “Knit a scarf or something out of it,” he said. “That should help.”

Frank, with the help of his grandma, made fingerless gloves, and soon he was rarely seen without them, especially when autumn set in. Sure enough, he got sick less frequently than before, but when Jon asked what was in the wool, Ryan just grinned.

“Nothing,” he said. “But they remind Frank to dress warmly before he runs out and plays in the cold.”

(Despite this, whenever Frank did get sick, Ryan tended to disappear for a half hour or so, and Frank told stories about the most amazing dreams he had, of weird and otherworldly visitors who came and kept him company when he was coughing in the middle of the night.)

For all the sudden increase of magic in the town, Jon’s favourite moments were the silly ones, the quiet ones; where he looked up and caught Brendon’s eye and got a real Brendon smile, a big one, the ones that made Jon so angry and so sorry that he’d never seen Brendon before. Mostly, though, he felt like he could deal without the magic as long as he had _them,_ like on the day Spencer decided to take a broom to the cobwebs and Ryan flew at him in a white-faced rage, and spent the rest of the day murmuring comforting nonsense to the spiders, and Brendon laughed and laughed.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/14.png)yan was standing at the window when Spencer came in, letting the first cold September wind in with him. Spencer paused and stood for a moment in the doorway, the chimes mercifully silent; Ryan looked very far away, eyes fixed on something outside the window that Spencer was abruptly certain he couldn’t see.

He closed the door hesitantly and crossed to Ryan, stepping lightly across the floor. “You alright?” he asked. He looked around for Brendon, even for other customers, but they were alone in the room, and Spencer wasn’t even entirely sure that Ryan was fully there.

“Autumn’s here,” Ryan said, quietly. He touched the windowpane just gently; on the road, a flurry of leaves were scuffling along the gutter.

“Yeah,” Spencer agreed, slowly. He reached out and put a hand on Ryan’s back, between his shoulder blades. Ryan felt very cold, even through his shirt.

“I always think,” Ryan murmured, “That at least with winter you know where you stand.”

“I guess,” Spencer said, even though he didn’t understand. He stood very still instead, and after a moment Ryan sighed and leaned back into him. When he turned around, finally, Spencer stood awkwardly for a moment before Ryan moved in and Spencer hugged him, holding Ryan as close and well as he could.

Brendon came in then, laughing with his arms full of groceries, carrying dead leaves on the soles of his shoes. Ryan looked up and smiled, and for one moment, Spencer thought that his eyes reflected not the shop or even anything in it, but a sea nowhere nearby.

Autumn changed things. Outside the shop, Spencer watched as the tree spreading its shadow over the pavement changed colour too quickly, the leaves touched as though by a static, pervasive fire, creeping up and curling over them, smoothing long, insidious fingers that couldn’t be escaped. One day he stood and lingered a little longer than usual, only to turn and see Ryan standing at the glass, not even watching him, staring at nothing.

Ryan’s distraction was, much as Spencer hated to admit it, becoming more and more frequent. He seemed constantly exhausted, and Spencer looked at the dark smudges under his eyes and the slight trembling of his hands, like he was under a lot of stress, and wasn’t sure what to do, how to fix things. In the end, he just asked uselessly again and again if Ryan was alright, and Ryan smiled dimly, said that he’d been having some trouble sleeping.

Spencer couldn’t help but feel himself fade into the background, taking Jon with him, while Ryan walked away from them all and left Brendon standing on his own. All of a sudden they were isolated from each other, and Spencer didn’t know how to fix it – instead he stood helplessly and listened to Brendon fight with Ryan in the next room.

(“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Ryan said. “I – what’s wrong, what are you so pissed about—”

“As if you don’t _know_ ,” Brendon hissed. “As if you can’t see! Ryan, what are you _doing_?”

“Please believe me,” Ryan said, quiet and distant, “when I say I have no idea.”

Outside, the tree shivered and shook, branches whipping as if caught in a high wind.)

It was hard, too, not to sense something Spencer wasn’t entirely sure he believed in. In a way, it was all too easy to ignore parlour tricks and explain them away, to laugh at Ryan’s conjurings – it was harder to deceive himself in terms of the faint aura, the shadow of things at Ryan’s back, the way magic seemed to gather around him. Sometimes Spencer thought he could see wings; often he walked into a room to find Ryan pressing his forehead against glass windows and murmuring strange, foreign words that _sounded_ like protection, like safety, only his voice was always faintly desperate.

On the last night of September, Spencer stayed the night, with Jon up in town visiting Cassie. When he got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water, he found Ryan sitting in the kitchen, fingers tapping on the table, back straight and unmoving; not sleeping, not doing anything. Spencer had the unaccountable feeling that Ryan was waiting, and maybe protecting the household as best he could.

It was frightening and useful at the same time, realising that only by understanding that sometimes _Ryan_ wished magic didn’t exist could he come to terms with it himself.

“I want mulled wine,” Ryan said lazily. Spencer thought that they probably spent more time lying about on the shop floor than was either cool or healthy, but when they closed up the shop, it was often the room with the most light and space (“I’m working on the lounge,” Brendon told them, grimacing, “but seriously, you have not fucking _seen_ clutter like this before”).

“I don’t think I’ve ever had that,” Brendon answered. Spencer happened to know for a fact that Brendon had barely had anything – no drinking for years when he was living with his family, and when he’d finally moved out he hadn’t been able to afford any added rebellion.

“I had it once,” Jon said. “At Halloween.”

“There’s red wine somewhere,” Brendon said, flapping a hand, and Spencer got up and brought it back before Brendon started wondering exactly how hard it would be for them to make mulled wine on their own (Spencer didn’t trust any of them, and especially not Brendon’s random and slightly insane urges to do whatever would make Ryan happy). It turned out that there were actually three bottles of red wine, and after a moment’s hesitation, Spencer brought them all, and wine glasses. It was Saturday night, anyway, and they all had tomorrow off.

It didn’t take long before they were all sprawled around properly on the floor. _Fucking lightweights_ , Spencer thought, a little blearily, but it was kind of nice, too, Ryan humming and exhaling misty breaths that turned into butterflies, or ships, or horses, like something out of Tolkien. Brendon had his head in Jon’s lap and had somehow procured some bubble mixture, was blowing shining heaps of them at the smoky forms to see how they reacted to detergent intruders on their airspace (so far, the answer seemed to be: violently).

It might have been an ordinary night, Spencer thought, but Ryan looked distant again, gaze unfocused, and Spencer had a feeling that Brendon was less drunk than he was pretending. He was slumped on the ground and humming idly to himself, but his eyes were sharp. It was Jon, though, who finally dragged the subject away from a cheerful and enthusiastic debate about the merits of The Beatles vs. The Beach Boys.

“Frank Iero’s sick again, did you know?” he said. “Poor kid.”

Brendon made a face. “You’re gonna sit up all night all over again now, huh?” His tone was teasing, but Ryan looked a little guilty and there was some small annoyance in Brendon’s voice when he sighed, “Jesus, Ryan.”

“I don’t get it, really,” Jon said, sleepily. “Can’t you just _fix_ him?”

“Um,” Ryan said. He stretched for a moment, cross-legged with his hands pushing up towards the ceiling, and then he reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. “I – not really, no.” He was quiet, as if waiting for objections, but when nothing came he continued, haltingly, “The problem with so many magicians is – well, first off, the land is Faerie, but not everyone _is_ a – a fairy, I guess, in your sense of the word. There’s too many different things, different species and cultures and even, you know, individuals, only one of them in all of Faerie. There are even ordinary humans, although we have a much longer lifespan than you, and then out of _them_ come the magicians. There’s. There’s not that many of us.”

Brendon sat up, eyes dark but interested, and Spencer leaned in a little closer, despite himself. Ryan _never_ talked about these things. He looked slightly unhappy to be doing so now, eyes fixed on the wooden floorboards, darting up on occasion to check that they were still listening, but his voice was low and steady and, after a little while, grew stronger.

“So the problem with magicians,” Ryan told them, and Spencer was very, very glad that he had had enough to drink that he could hear this without feeling all out of sorts about magic again, “is that, umn, quite a few tend to go bad. And it’s not out of having some evil deep down in you like in books, it’s not a definite beginning or flaw, arrogance or hubris, or something. It generally – it starts when you try to use magic as a means to an end. Magic to get more power, more money, more – more love. It’s easy, of course, it’s easier even than you would think. But magic isn’t meant to be used.”

He waved his hand idly, and the candles glowed a little brighter. Spencer glanced around quickly at the others; Jon’s face was smooth and intent, eyes curious – Brendon just looked frightened.

“Magic just _is_ ,” Ryan said, very softly. “You can’t mess with that too much, or it has a way of turning you bad. It gets warped. And wrong. It makes _everything_ wrong.” He drew in a shuddering breath, and then attempted a smile. “Magic works best with people who are light of heart, who don’t depend on it but can be helped by it all the same. Tiny little things. So. That’s why I can’t fix Frank.”

They were quiet for a while; then Jon ventured, “Do you ever miss… you know. Home?”

Spencer pushed his hair back behind his ear, uneasy, and Brendon looked furious, but Ryan seemed to relax a bit, leaning back on his elbows and smiling crookedly. “Not really,” he said.

“Didn’t you have friends, and things?” Jon asked. “Family?”

Ryan bit his lip. “No,” he said, “Or at least not in a way that you would understand,” and they fell silent. After a moment, Ryan added, “It’s really… you have no idea how confusing a place it can be. Thornton Hill makes so much more _sense_.”

“Yeah,” Brendon said, bitterly. “This place is full of sense. The most fucking boring place in the—”

“No, really,” Ryan said, sounding frustrated. “You have to like – in Faerie, you always have to be watching and waiting and on guard, and it’s so hard to have real friends. Or it was for me, anyway. Here it’s just – it’s difficult sometimes, I have to watch and not… not meddle too much in the affairs of the town, not make everything too easy for people, because it really is, it’s really, really easy, I can’t explain to you properly how easy it is, you honestly couldn’t begin to understand – but it’s still not the same as it is there.”

“You sugarcoat everything,” Brendon told him coldly, standing up and ignoring the faintly hurt crease between Ryan’s eyes. “You’re so – whatever, Ross, seriously. I’m going to go piss.”

He stalked off, and Ryan’s mouth twisted unhappily. “He doesn’t believe me,” he said. Spencer thought it wasn’t as simple as that; knew that Brendon didn’t not believe Ryan, he just didn’t believe that Ryan could be _here_.

“He wants to, though,” Jon said, sleepy and simple. “So there’s that in your favour.”

“Yeah.” Ryan laughed, quiet and mirthless. “All I’m saying is that this is better than Faerie. And not just because it has you guys. I’m not trying to pretend that it’s some kind of – of course it’s hard, and there’s boundaries _everywhere_. I’m – I’m constantly afraid about screwing up.” His voice was full of an ancient, tired guilt. “I’ve done it before.”

Something cold twisted in Spencer’s gut, but in the end he didn’t do anything besides moving up and scuffing his hand through Ryan’s hair, smiling down at him when Ryan pushed back into the touch. Spencer twisted around until he was half leaning on Ryan, their heads resting together, and kept his mouth closed. He could have said, Brendon would be the saddest guy in the world by now if it wasn’t for you and nobody would know that he could sing; he could have said, my life was so _boring_ ; he could have said, everybody in this village is happier and they don’t even know why.

Instead, he just propped his head on one hand and said, “You’re doing good.” Ryan looked up and met his eyes, surprised, and then smiled slowly, and Spencer added, “For a fraud.”

Ryan started to laugh. Spencer grinned, cheered up, and then looked away just in time to see Brendon standing in the doorway, hidden in shadows.

They ended up staying the night, even though Brendon had only come back for a little while before he disappeared again, and that had pretty much killed any remainder of a cheery mood. Ryan headed for bed earlier than usual, and Spencer was so surprised and (secretly) pleased that Ryan was going to bed at all that he forgot to feel weird about being left alone in a shop he didn’t own.

“We crashing on couches?” Jon asked with a yawn at around one, and Spencer nodded and stood up, dragging Jon up with a hand. Jon shuffled close and put his arm around Spencer’s waist, and Spencer grinned – Jon was the most affectionate drunk he knew, and with the tension Brendon had left in the room, he appreciated it more than usual.

“Hey,” Jon murmured, as if picking up on his thoughts. “You think they’re okay?”

“Yeah,” Spencer said, because he did. Autumn was maybe strange, after that bright summer, new friends for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the sun thawing Spencer’s frozen life. He said, “We’ll make sure they are.”

Jon grinned. “Yeah,” he said, and they wandered off to find suitable sofas and blankets to crash on.

(On his way, Spencer noticed an ajar door and soft voices, and lingered outside it for a moment, peering through the crack. Ryan was stretched out on the bed beside Brendon, hand stretched up and pointing to the stars on Brendon’s ceiling, murmuring about constellations and the mythologies of a foreign sky.

 _I wonder_ , Spencer thought suddenly, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, went to bed.)

Even with a sort of steady, fierce determination that they were going to be fine, autumn was bad. Brendon looked progressively smaller and unhappier, shoulders hunching in on himself. He and Ryan took to dropping by Spencer and Jon’s nearly as often as they all hung out at the shop, though Ryan generally looked confused and unsure when they did so.

One night, Spencer cornered Brendon and Brendon just shook his head, looking impossibly weary. “I don’t get it,” he said. “It’s too big. I don’t think I can ever get it.”

“Brendon, seriously,” Spencer said, almost desperately. “What are you scared about? Ryan’s on fucking edge the whole time and the more miserable _you_ get the more he does, and then it’s just like, oh, here comes the Mopey Twins—”

“I can _feel_ him going somewhere,” Brendon spat out, sudden and fierce. “I can – he goes off, out the back door, only he doesn’t appear in the little garden behind the house, you know? He’s just gone. And then he comes back late – you don’t have to laugh at me, I, I know how ridiculous I sound, I can’t even.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like he’s living in two different worlds at the same time.”

“Brendon,” Spencer said uncertainly. “Brendon, you know it isn’t true—”

“God, don’t be such an ass,” Brendon said, eyes dark and chin jutting up, and Spencer was reminded once again why so many people in the town had the impression that Brendon thought he was too good for them. “You can keep pretending as long as you like, we’re all used to it, but don’t when I’m telling you that – Jesus, Spencer, some days he doesn’t have a shadow, or he’ll walk around but his feet don’t make any noise. And I don’t want him to leave.”

“He’s not going to,” Spencer said. “Brendon, he’s not _going_ to.”

“It’s stupid,” Brendon said. “To get attached, it was so stupid. I’m so stupid.”

“Brendon,” Spencer said, helpless, and Brendon shook his head, edged his way inside. Ryan and Jon looked up from the counter, and Ryan’s eyes were huge and dark but he kept quiet, and Spencer thought it was both of their fault, both of them too stubborn and silent and frightened. Brendon leaned easily against the counter and smiled, and Spencer watched as Ryan edged closer, pressing up against Brendon’s side.

Brendon didn’t move, and Spencer wondered about footsteps ringing out with no one nearby somewhere in Faerie, or Ryan’s shadow wandering dark and lonely on green hills.

It was cold, halfway through October, when Spencer opened his door on Friday morning and nearly tripped over Brendon.

“Fuck,” he said, Jon appearing like magic (some part of his brain laughed tiredly) at his shoulder. “You alright?”

Brendon looked up, pale with dark shadows under his eyes, face blank. “He’s gone,” he said. “For good, this time, I’m pretty sure.”

Spencer’s knees were suddenly a little wobblier than usual. He sat down heavily next to Brendon. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Brendon said. Jon made a strange noise behind him. “It’s been two nights. And he was weird before he left. He was all – he looked really worried, and I think I heard him talking to somebody, late the other night. And half of the books in the library have disappeared with him, and one of his guitars.” He rubbed his knuckles against closed eyes, laughed tiredly. “I know, ‘cos I just finished sorting out all the stuff, finally. And now his favourite guitar’s gone.”

“Brendon,” Spencer said. He thought about magic, how it had become easy to accept if he just didn’t say it out loud, and how now he thought he would say that he believed in it a hundred times if he thought it had a chance of fixing Brendon. He thought about how frightening it was that this didn’t feel entirely like a surprise; that he felt instead as if the threat of a storm lingering overhead had finally broken. He almost tilted his face up, searching for rain.

“He might come back,” Jon said. “He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, he—”

“Maybe he meant to,” Brendon said, “And forgot.” Spencer sucked in a harsh breath.

“I think you’re wrong,” Jon insisted, voice a little strained. “I think you’re – look, let’s just go back to the shop, all three of us, and we’ll just, we’ll wait.”

Brendon looked at him, eyes dull. “If you want,” he said, and Spencer wanted to hug him, but wasn’t sure if maybe a touch wouldn’t break Brendon right now.

They kept the sign on the door flipped to _Closed_ , and ignored it when people peered in through the grimy windows at them, looking curious. Brendon slumped in an armchair, the blanket with something about mermaids written on its label wrapped around his shoulders (“It’s cold,” he said, quietly). Jon twisted his way across the floorboards and back again, and Spencer watched them both helplessly, mind racing, trying to come up with yet another explanation, a reason.

“How long has it been again?” he asked.

“Today’s the third day,” Brendon said.

“Maybe he’s just lost track of time,” Jon told them, words tumbling out hasty and blurring over one another. “He’s so – he sucks at that stuff sometimes, you know he does, maybe he’s just forgotten what day it is again.”

“Maybe,” Brendon agreed. He shut his eyes, looking impossibly tired. Spencer wondered whether he had slept at all last night.

“Jesus,” he snapped. He had gone slowly from confusion to disbelief on the way over. Jon looked at him now and Spencer could tell from his face that there was dark fury lingering in his eyes. “I could fucking _kill_ him.”

Brendon made a small sound that was almost an agreement. Spencer glared at him.

“I’m _serious_!”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Brendon asked with an awful laugh. “The magic dude from _Faerie_ was going to stick around forever? For fuck’s sake.”

“I don’t think Ryan would do it,” Spencer said. “He wouldn’t just take off – he was our _friend_.”

Brendon shrugged. “Friends come and go.”

“Shut up,” Spencer said fiercely. “Shut the fuck up. He _loves_ you.”

Brendon flinched and Jon came and sat on the arm of the chair, slung an arm around his shoulders. “It’ll be alright,” he said. “He’ll come back. It’ll be alright.”

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/15.png)yan didn’t come back.

What did happen was that Jon was woken up three days later at two in the morning by Brendon shaking him awake, face bright and alive and furious all at once, and clutching a few crumpled pages in his hand.

“What is it?” he asked muzzily, sitting up.

“News,” Brendon told him, voice a little rough. “Come on, let’s go wake up Spencer.”

This done with as little bodily injury as possible, the three of them sat around the kitchen table with coffee peering at the letter.

“Well,” Jon said, eventually, hating the silence more than the twisting, ugly feeling in his stomach. “What’s this about?”

“It’s a legal document,” Spencer answered, voice blank. “He’s given us the shop.”

“It’s not just a legal document,” Brendon countered, voice hard. “It’s a _will_.”

Spencer put his hands over his head and stretched, knuckles cracking audibly. “We don’t know that,” he said. “It doesn’t mention—”

“It’s as good as a will,” Brendon told him, “and you know it.” He reached and flipped it over again, so that they could all read the note on the back for the umpteenth time.

 _I’m sorry,_ Ryan had written, in his tall, spiky scrawl. _I’ll miss you. Take care of each other._

 __Jon felt something cold and awful twisting at his gut; he curved his hands around his elbows, and missed the summer. He looked at their faces: Brendon pale but somehow cheered, a certain determination settling around him; Spencer with his arms crossed, face unreadable. “Well,” Jon said, steady as he could make it. “What are we going to do?”

“Go after him,” Brendon said promptly. “No duh.”

Jon shifted from foot to foot, sneaking another glance at Spencer’s blank face. “Into _Faerie_?”

Brendon bit his lip and looked a little embarrassed, a little ashamed, more than a little scared, but after a moment he nodded once, firmly. Automatically, Jon turned with Brendon to look at Spencer.

Spencer shrugged easily. “No duh,” he echoed, and Brendon smiled.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/16.png)he trouble with Faerie, Brendon thought, was that it didn’t exactly have a roadmap for how to get there. Or if it did (and here Brendon lost his train of thought for a moment, grinning at the idea of directions to pixie gas stations and all night diners where you could eat, Brendon didn’t know, a sandwich with Faerie dust in it or something), Ryan didn’t possess a copy.

Brendon knew. Delegated to the ‘finding the way’ part of the mission (Jon was ‘supplies’, and Spencer was apparently ‘Queen Bitch Overlord’ or something), he felt like he’d flipped his way through every book Ryan owned in the last few days, disturbing human fiction included, and Ryan owned a _lot_ of books.

It wasn’t like it wasn’t ever mentioned, either. There were thousands of cheerfully annoying little references to getting in and out of Faerie or to where the books called, a little disconcertingly, The Smoky Earth, and all of them were ridiculously unhelpful. Most of them made comments about doors and walking _through_ doors and _finding_ doors ( _one in every magician’s home!_ a book said, but it was lying, because Brendon had walked through every door in the house and so far the only thing that had happened was a can of tomatoes had rolled out of nowhere from a shelf in Ryan’s otherwise empty kitchen cupboards, and fallen on Brendon’s head).

 _Of course, any youth knows the rudimentary magic and skill needed to find and create doors to other realms_ , the book Brendon was reading now said in an unfairly condescending tone, and Brendon hefted it up and hurled it across the room.

“Fuck you,” he snapped at where it was lying, face down with the pages creased beneath it. He thought of what Ryan’s reproachful expression would be if he saw it, and swallowed hard. “And fuck you, too,” he said, quietly.

He felt, to be honest, a little stupid. He’d been aware, of course, of how serious it was, had seen Ryan withdraw, but he’d never really thought that it was unwilling. _Selfish_ , he thought, and dug his fingernails into his palms, thought of the strange occurrences: the mysterious voices in the back room late at night; the ravens that had tapped on the windows carrying letters in their beaks; the time Ryan had read something that turned him pale white, and Brendon had felt something a little like a shockwave, enough to make him look down and see his coffee turned to dust in the cup.

The door to the library opened and Spencer came in, crossing the floor to him with a sympathetic grin. “Still no luck?” he asked, and he sounded just amused enough that Brendon forgave him after a reluctant moment for all the bossiness of the past week.

“Nope,” he said, and stretched his arms above him with a yawn, knuckles cracking audibly. “Fuck, m’tired.”

“You alright?” Spencer asked. “Want me to take a look at them instead for a while?”

“Nah. Just didn’t get much sleep last night, that’s all,” Brendon told him, and then regretted it and set his jaw, not wanting to say anymore. He was sleeping enough, he thought. Just not – comfortably. It was easier if he just didn’t think about what might be happening, or probably was happening, or even the stupid, gaping absences where Brendon turned around and – anyway.

Spencer didn’t go into it, thankfully, just nodded. “Hmm,” he said, and drummed his fingers absently against the hilt of his sword.

It should be absurd, Brendon thought, Spencer with that massive old weapon strapped around his waist, absurd or at the very least hilarious, but Brendon didn’t feel the urge to laugh or marvel in the slightest. It just looked weirdly right, the easy way Spencer handled it, the way it tapped against his thigh sometimes as he walked.

They had found it two days ago, going through Ryan’s bedroom a little guiltily for a hint of something, anything, but with no luck. Then Spencer had half-crawled under the bed, and emerged a little bemused and clutching the sword. For the first few minutes that Spencer had been holding it, Brendon was pretty sure that it had been _humming_.

Jon had looked at him and said, lightly, mouth twitching, “I think it likes you, Spence.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Spencer had said, narrowing his eyes. “It’s just – electricity, or whatever. There’s probably something on in the house. Check the heater, Brendon?”

But he had strapped it on around his waist regardless, and it had looked good, looked fine. Still looked fine. Brendon tilted his head and thought about old stories, swords emerging when you needed them, ladies in lakes.

“Jon’s found some good stuff,” Spencer said eventually, dragging Brendon’s attention back to the present. “Weird, but like… good.”

“I know, he showed me this morning,” Brendon answered. It was true, and interesting. Jon kept literally stumbling across things, he told Brendon, that seemed weirdly necessary to them, even if he didn’t think so at first: bottles of liquids labelled in Ryan’s handwriting with things like _Can Help_ and _In Case of a Sudden Shock_ and _Use as a Substitute for Prince Charming’s Kiss_. Jon had packed them all away carefully in his backpack that never quite seemed to run out of room, along with other things that cropped up out of nowhere: a rope that had a note pinned to it, _always the right length_ , and a thermos that didn’t ever quite seem to empty, and a blanket that wasn't particularly special, just nice and warm and bigger than it looked.

Brendon fiddled with his hair absently, tucking a strand behind his ear. He didn’t know what to do with his hands anymore. “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling crookedly. “I’m kinda failing pretty hard at the whole helpful thing.”

Spencer looked at him, eyes dark and serious. “You’re not,” he told him. “It’s just hard. We’ll find a way.”

“Maybe you guys’ll have to be the heroes,” Brendon said, voice light, even though his throat felt a little hard. “With your sword and your supplies and shit. I’ve got nothing.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Spencer said. “As if Ryan would ever forgive us if we showed up without you. As if we could even _find_ him.” Brendon shrugged, and Spencer looked at him, thoughtful. “Hey,” he said. “You’ve been singing a lot, you know?”

“Yeah?” Brendon blinked. “I hadn’t noticed. Old habits, I guess.”

Spencer just regarded him for a moment and then nodded and shrugged. “Keep looking,” he said, and then paused, looking a little embarrassed, before adding sheepishly, “And hey, if nothing else… tomorrow’s Halloween. You never know.”

“Oh,” Brendon said, surprised. He hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, okay.”

Spencer nodded and left, and Brendon went and retrieved his book, found his place in it. He had a song stuck in his head and after a while he stopped humming and sang.

And, despite the constant, tired sense of unease and fear in his stomach, blurring his head, making his eyes sore, his voice was full and strong.

The next morning dawned cold and clear, blue mist dissipating by the time Brendon got up, earlier than usual. Jon and Spencer sat in the kitchen hunched over cups of coffee, dark shadows under their eyes, and Brendon thought he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been sleeping.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked, and Spencer shook his head, tiredly.

“We’ve been through every door in the house again,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Okay,” Brendon said, and busied himself at the counter, fixing hot coffee with lots of sugar. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, Brendon thought. It was only nine o’clock in the morning.

They didn’t move as much as usual, that day. Brendon thought that maybe he should be searching through the books again, but a tense, still air had settled on him, on all of them. They sat around the back lounge room, Jon and Brendon half-holding guitars, Spencer tapping an idle, too fast beat on his denim-clad legs.

Brendon felt a little bit like it should have happened at midday, or at the exact moment when the sun sliced through the clouds, a single ray of gold guiding their way, but instead Jon just looked up suddenly, eyes curious, and then sharp.

“Hey,” he said, and nodded to the window. The trees had crowded around it, tapping at the glass with long, slightly sinister looking branches, leaves hanging off them silver-green-grey, despite the autumn. Brendon and Spencer looked up and followed his gaze, and suddenly Brendon’s heart was pounding. _Finally_ , he thought, _oh, thank fuck, finally_.

Spencer swallowed hard. “Was that forest always there?” he asked aloud, slowly, wondering, and Jon started to smile.

They stood up and went and fetched the backpacks that were waiting in the kitchen, packed with as many things they could think of, and still light. Brendon hefted it on his shoulders and took a breath.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Spencer said quickly.

Brendon turned, could feel a needlessly cruel snarl forming in his throat, on his lips – he didn’t _want_ to wait, it had been a week and a half, he needed them, and Brendon needed him, they had to _go_ —

“Um,” Spencer said, “I think we should grab some jackets, dude.”

Jackets and coats hastily grabbed, they look at each other, strangely solemn, and then Jon opened the backdoor. “Okay,” he said, “Let’s go get Ryan,” and Brendon took a breath of clean, strange, biting cold air and then stepped out into it.

The path between the trees was long, and dark, and led quickly away from the house. Brendon swallowed hard and looked at either side of him; Jon’s eyes were huge and a little frightened, but he made an effort and grinned when he saw Brendon looking, and Spencer just looked suddenly, brilliantly calm, face impassive as they went on through the woods. The trees seemed to crowd around them, behind them, and Brendon determinedly didn’t look back. There was no point in doing that. Not yet.

Jon looked back, though, giggling nervously over his shoulder. “Uh, guys?” he said. “I’m starting to think we didn’t really… think this through properly.”

“Nothing to think through,” Brendon said, firmly, but Spencer made a face.

“You mean there wasn’t a _choice_ ,” he corrected. “Which yeah, obviously, but like.” He looked around the dark woods and bit his lip. “We don’t really know what to _do_ , here.”

Brendon grinned, and then spontaneously cart-wheeled along the narrow path.

“That’s the easiest part,” he said, when he was upright again. “We’ll just follow the fairytales.”

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/17.png)asier said than done, in so many ways, Jon thought. Faerie was a strange, eerie landscape, colder than Thornton Hill had been, and the path through the trees was often dark, often hard underfoot. The first night they stopped, they all huddled under the magic blanket, cold and frightened while a storm boomed too close overhead. They told each other stupid, pointless stories and jokes to keep their minds off the strange noises that weren’t part of the storm coming from outside the little clearing they were huddled in, the unaccountable feeling Jon had of being watched.

The next morning, the woods were full of a mist, twisting through the trees and making it hard to keep on the path, especially as it took sharp, unexpected turns, and it was only through Spencer’s sharp eyes that they were able to keep an eye on it. Once, they saw a series of flickering, golden lights leading off through the fog, and Spencer was about to set off for them before Brendon and Jon both reached and grabbed for him.

“Are you _insane_?” Brendon asked harshly, and Jon swallowed down the panic in his chest.

“Come on, Spence,” he said. “Your mom _told_ us the stories. Don’t trust lights if they come out of nowhere.”

“Are you – you think they’re, what, werelights or something?” Spencer asked, sounding incredulous, and Jon said nothing, only shrugged helplessly. After a moment, Spencer sighed and they went on trying to navigate the tricky turns and unexpected corners in the path. The ground was stony and unforgiving, too, and by the end of the second day his soles were aching, his eyes sore from straining through the fog.

They lay under the blanket again, and Brendon sang softly, old, sad songs that were comforting all the same ( _oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine_ ). After a little while, he started to sound exhausted, voice weak, and Spencer said, “Hey, it’s alright, just, just sleep.”

“I keep hearing things,” Brendon said tiredly. “Voices and other songs and – I hate it, I hate this place.”

“This could be the last night in the woods,” Spencer said. “They can’t last forever, and I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to find Ryan in here. Let’s just hang out for a city, okay? That’s our best bet.”

“Yeah,” Brendon said, and Jon drifted off to sleep to the sound of Brendon’s ragged, frantic humming, and the lingering unease of higher voices beyond that, just out of reach, in a counter-melody, a different, darker song.

By the end of the next day, Spencer was right and they had reached the end of the woods, but any relief that they felt over that dissipated quickly. They climbed up over hills that were steep and tiring, stones getting caught mysteriously in their shoes, and by the end of the day he had a huge, painful blister, not used to wearing sneakers, and none of them had thought to bring bandaids. Jon was tired and grumpy and wanted to snap at Brendon or Spencer for it, but of course _he_ had been the one in charge of packing, so he didn’t say anything, only went to sleep early, back turned to them.

In the morning, he felt kind of bad for his rudeness, but Spencer said, “Don’t worry about it,” when he tried to apologise, and Brendon just grinned and clapped his shoulder, and they continued on.

Really, it was Brendon who was in the best mood – worried like all of them were, but at least fiercely determined that they were _getting_ somewhere, _going_ somewhere, that Ryan was an achievable goal. It was Brendon too who skipped ahead and came back one day with news that he could see a small village ahead, just down the hill, and that probably they could reach it by tomorrow.

They did, earlier than expected, too, but the village was desolate, doors locked and bolted, and when they peered in the windows they couldn’t see anyone. Once, a small figure stood up in a field and peered curiously at them, the size of a child, but when they ran towards it, calling out desperately for help or at least some form of information, it let out a terrified shriek and turned and ran, darting out of sight before any of them could catch up.

Spencer and Brendon looked exhausted and dispirited. Jon took a breath and straightened his shoulders. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s just keep going,” and a little way past the village they found what looked like a main road, so there was that, at least.

They began covering less ground every day, too easily worn out, and Jon was acutely aware that their food supplies were running low, down to slightly stale loaves of bread and cheese that he sliced increasingly thinner pieces of. Brendon raised his eyebrows and said, “I feel like a pilgrim or something,” and then, “My mom would be so _proud_ ,” clutching his hands beneath his chin and fluttering his eyelashes, and that made Jon feel a little better about lunch on one day, at least.

Most of the time, though, he was begin to become increasingly convinced that this had been something they were totally unprepared for. Already a week had passed since they had left Thornton Hill, and they were filthy and exhausted, unused to the constant travelling, to sleeping on hard ground every night. Spencer began to look more drawn and worried, and one night he waited until Brendon was asleep before confiding, “I keep thinking we’re on a really short schedule, you know. I mean… it was like a will, that letter. It was. I think Ryan might be in serious danger, I think there’s something really wrong.”

“We’ll get there,” Jon said, repeating the constant mantra in his head. “We’ll find him, we will, and when we do we’ll bring him back, and he’ll be _fine_.”

“Maybe,” Spencer said, unhappily. “I just think we need to hurry _up_. We – we need to find a city. Soon.”

It was two days after that that they came to the crossroads. There were two signs inscribed with incomprehensible script, and then one that said _to The Sea_ and another that said _to The Green_.

The three of them exchanged looks. “Well,” Jon said. “The Sea is pretty clear. The Green could be anything, though.”

“Including a city,” Brendon said, hopeful.

“I don’t know,” Spencer replied, slow and doubtful. “Isn’t it more likely that the ones written in some different language are the ones pointing the way to the cities?”

“Not necessarily,” Jon said. “Ryan told me once that Faerie and human languages kind of tended to echo each other in some ways, so that the most common language is going to be the same. And he said that they speak English here – like, a higher form of English, or something, but still _English_.”

“So,” Brendon said, determined. “We go to The Green?”

“It’s a weird name,” Spencer said, still sounding indecisive.

“Let’s just go down the road for a while,” Jon told him. “A couple of days. Worse comes to worst, we double back and try another one.”

Spencer hesitated for a moment longer and then finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “The Green. Okay, let’s go.”

In the end, it took less than a day before Brendon was grinning triumphantly and Spencer looked cheered again, because the green fields were giving way to scattered houses and a little way ahead they could see buildings rising out of nowhere, an unmistakable town, a city. The road seemed to speed up, too, and it wasn’t that long before they were standing on the outskirts, the dirt road giving way to cobblestones. From the moment, too, that they stepped onto that first street it seemed that they were swept up in the city, pushed along, taking a too short time to get into what felt like the centre of the city, surrounded on all sides by people of all different kinds, and animals, and the unmistakeable bustle of a marketplace.

“This is – _fuck_ ,” Brendon said, staring around, eyes huge, and Jon knew what he meant. The city was like nothing he had ever seen or even dreamed of before, mad and sprawling and _alive_. Jon felt like there was a consciousness in every stone, and he itched for a camera even as he knew that there was no way he would be able to capture this, make it understood.

“There must be _someone_ here who’s heard of Ryan,” Spencer said, grinning, and Brendon laughed out loud for no real reason, but Jon understood anyway, the need to make this something amazing and thus, in a way, worthy of amusement, just so that it didn’t completely overwhelm, so it didn’t eat them alive.

“We should find a hotel or something like it,” Jon said. “I bet they don’t call them that. What is it? Like, a tavern.”

“A _pub_ ,” Brendon declared, grinning, and Spencer said, fervently,

“Oh, God, I could do with a drink.”

“And a bath,” Jon added. “I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be clean.”

“I reek,” Brendon agreed, “But I want a drink, first.”

“Well, duh,” Jon said.

The best bit, he decided as they set off looking for one, was how they didn’t even really look that out of place; how there were grimy travellers everywhere, grim-faced and exhausted looking. Actually, there were a lot of people looking unhappy or frightened or just blank, he began to notice, uneasily, and maybe another reason why they were able to pass relatively unnoticed was because nobody looked each other in the face; everyone had their eyes averted, hurrying through the crowds with their gaze fixed on the ground.

“Hey,” Jon said, and nudged Spencer.

“I know,” Spencer told him, looking wary. “We’ll just. Wait and see.”

Jon kind of thought that maybe just doing that might lead to them being in a bit of trouble, but he was acutely aware that a little bit of paranoia was probably not the best thing to live by, especially considering the amount of time they had spent alone, on the road, in a different _world_. He hooked his thumbs under his backpack and kept going, forcing the worry down by making himself notice other things, like couples strolling arm in arm or dirty-faced children darting in and out between people, or the sudden glimpse of what he thought might just have been a unicorn.

Then Brendon whooped, loud and gleeful, and was leading them towards a tavern with a swinging sign that said _Nightstar_ and a window that looked into a packed room and a bar. Jon found it even easier to ignore misgivings when there was the prospect of sitting down, and some alcohol.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/18.png)ook, we’ll just _ask_ ,” Brendon said. He looked too triumphant, too proud, having guided them so far, taken them along, and Spencer felt creeping unease up his spine, a sudden, pressing need to say _no, let’s just go, let’s get away from here_ , even though he knew that they were so close, that this was where they needed to be.

In any case, he didn’t think Brendon would listen to him, and Jon looked enthusiastic, smiling, so Spencer just shrugged and Brendon beamed, turned to the fey guy keeping the bar, long, white hair spilling over his shoulders. Spencer noted with amusement that he didn’t even look at such things as out of the ordinary anymore, just took them in. He almost wished that he could wonder more at it, still – frightened as he was, sick to the stomach with it, he never wanted to forget this.

Brendon leaned over the bar, smiled widely. “Hey,” he said, “We were wondering if you could help – we’re trying to track down a friend of ours.”

“Sure,” the guy said. He leaned forward on his elbows, eyes bright blue, face attentive, and Brendon rapped his fingers along the counter, too fucking cocky, smiling, smiling.

“His name’s Ryan Ross,” Brendon said. “He’s a magician – kinda small, looks like a breeze could knock him over—”

“I’m sorry,” the Faerie told them, looking sympathetic. “There’s nobody in The Green of that name.”

Brendon’s face fell, but he took a breath, ploughed on. “Maybe he uses a different one, here,” he said. “He was here a long time ago, he was – we’re pretty sure he was really powerful, maybe you knew him? If you could just try and remember?”

The Faerie cocked his head to one side for a moment, and then shook it. “Sorry,” he said.

“That’s alright,” Brendon said, sinking back down onto his stool. “That’s alright, I just. Thanks anyway.”

“Any time,” the Faerie said. “Are you three new around here?”

“Yeah,” Jon answered, and the guy smiled; it lit up his whole face, made him breathtaking.

“Welcome,” he said, and bowed a little, palms facing up. “If you would like, we offer lodging here—”

“Oh,” Spencer said, breathing out. “That would be great. Thank you.”

“Go talk to Eleanor over there,” the Faerie said, pointing to a woman standing near the door, smiling and greeting people as they walked in, and Spencer nodded and stood, dragging Jon and Brendon up with him.

They were almost halfway across the crowded floor when a woman grabbed Spencer’s elbow, tugged him in close. “Hey,” she said, eyes dark and intent, fixed on his face. Her voice was low and rough, urgent. “You can’t go there. If you go there, you’ll be killed.”

Spencer put his hand on the hilt of his sword instinctively, eyes narrowing, but the woman tightened her grip on his elbow and shook it a little. “ _Listen_ to me,” she hissed. “I don’t know how much you know, but asking after Ryan Ross was a stupid thing to do and you’ve got to leave with me, _now_ , or you’ll be killed.”

Brendon swallowed hard, and Jon looked unsure. “Why should we trust you?” Spencer snapped.

“Because Ryan does,” the woman said, and Spencer felt Brendon’s little jolt by his side. Spencer glared at her, and she glared back, added, “Ryan Ross. He has a hat he made himself. He tends to sneak into your bed in the middle of the night and cuddle up. And he told me that you three would probably take it into your heads to do something stupid. You have to _trust_ me.”

Spencer looked up. At the bar, the Faerie was watching him with a clear, beautiful gaze. He bit back a shudder. Suddenly, he didn’t think he trusted anyone in this whole goddamn world.

“I think we should just go,” he began, slowly, but Brendon suddenly raised a shaking hand to stop him, and pointed. Around her wrist, the woman was wearing a bracelet made out of plastic beads, some of which spelled out _bden rocks_. Spencer let out a breath. He didn’t think that made it better, made it normal, but he also didn’t think he made much of a choice.

“Well,” he said, and bit his lip. “Okay, then.”

The woman led them out a back entrance, slipping out of sight quickly, so that it was only by fixing his eyes on the hem of her red skirt that Spencer could keep track of her. Finally, they were out in the cold night, and Spencer took a deep breath, stared at her.

“So,” Jon said, “What’s going on?”

She looked at them and shook her head. “Later,” she said. “Come with me,” and then took off down the street, hurrying through the empty alleyways. She kept a fast pace, and soon all three of them were out of breath trying to keep up with her, worry still gnawing at Spencer’s stomach.

  
[   
](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/184955.html#05)   


Eventually, though, they reached a metal stairwell that seemed to go up to nowhere, looking like it belonged more to their world than it did The Green, and she led them up it, their footsteps clanging out in the still night. At the top of the stairs was a small, warm house that Spencer hadn’t been able to see from the bottom, only a few rooms, with richly red curtains and rugs thrown around the place. It was tiny, more like an apartment than a house, but when she closed and locked the door and beckoned for them to sit on the carpet by the fireplace, Spencer felt warm and safe suddenly, for the first time in a long while.

“There,” she said, and let out a breath. She looked suddenly nicer, a warm, wicked light in her eyes, and Spencer thought that maybe she had been frightened, too. “Okay, so. Who’s who?”

“Um,” Spencer said, after a moment. “I’m Spencer – this is Jon, and this is Brendon.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” she said, baring her teeth in a sudden grin, and Spencer blinked at her and decided not to ask why. “Good, then. I’m Amanda Palmer. You’re very lucky that I was there tonight – I’m probably one of the last people left in The Green who wouldn’t report you for treason for speaking Ryan’s name.”

Brendon stared. “But – why? Ryan never said anything about being in trouble—”

“Ryan never said anything about Faerie at all,” Jon said quietly, and Brendon stiffened and nodded once, jerkily.

“Ryan wasn’t in trouble,” Amanda told them, pushing a dark strand of hair behind an ear. “It’s – you really don’t know anything?”

Spencer considered for a moment, looking at Brendon’s unhappy face. It wasn’t the truth, but he thought that maybe Amanda would understand, anyway, so he just shrugged and answered, “No.”

“Okay, then,” Amanda said. She sighed and looked down, and then finally she straightened and crossed her legs, putting her hands palm-down on her knees. When she spoke again, her voice was lower than usual, rich with colour and storytelling. “Very well, then. A long time ago, the magician Ryan Ross finished his apprenticeship and came to The Green. He was young, and proud, rightfully so, because he was the most talented magician we had come across in centuries. Incredibly gifted, slightly pretentious, more than a little arrogant, and it would be putting it lightly to say that many people disliked him for these things. But he was good, still, and he never used his magic for evil ends.”

Brendon opened his mouth, like he was about to be affronted on Ryan’s behalf, and Spencer exchanged a quick look with Jon, who cuffed Brendon quickly and lightly behind the ear. Brendon slanted a betrayed look at him, but quietened, leaning a little against Spencer’s shoulder as Amanda continued.

“All magicians have the responsibility to pass down the knowledge of their magic,” she said, “and Ryan was in high demand. He took only a few apprentices, ones who showed great promise, and taught them what he knew, because he liked to have companions to talk with. He taught them all manner of spells and charms and words of power, but he forgot that he was young himself still, and blind in some ways, and he didn’t know or understand that he also needed to teach prudence and responsibility, the conservation and consideration of magic as well as its use. It was not a very great surprise when one apprentice, the most powerful of the lot, started thinking about magic for his own gain, and he turned away from Ryan and attempted to conquer large parts of the country, killed many people.”

Spencer took in a breath, wishing it wasn’t so easy to imagine. Amanda waited for a moment, eyes kind, and when she finished her story, it was in a softer, less dramatic tone.

“Ryan didn’t have a choice,” she said, and she sounded sad. “He tried, we all tried, to decide what could be done, but in the end he only had one option. He banished his apprentice from Faerie, which is no small thing to do, because to be forced away from Faerie is one of the most terrible things that can be done to us. Then he disappeared, and we never heard from him again.”

Brendon raised his head, looking at her sharply. “Then what’s going on now?”

Amanda rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hand. “We didn’t hear from him,” she said. “We _sent_ for him. You may have noticed him coming back and forth between the two lands for a while? There were rumours that somehow this apprentice had returned, was ready to do evil again, had amassed even greater power, and Ryan was trying to help us discover what was wrong.”

“And then what?” Brendon’s face was very white.

Amanda looked down, face drawn and pained. “The apprentice,” she said, quietly, “or not an apprentice anymore – in any case, he won. Ryan didn’t have word sent to him in time, and he returned to check on things only to find it too late. His last visit, he found upon arrival that the dark magician was in control.”

Spencer felt kind of dizzy. “But – then Ryan—”

“Yes,” Amanda said, eyes dark. “The very first thing he did, almost, was take Ryan prisoner, delighted now that he had the power and forces behind him to do so. Still, even with the rest of my – us still loyal to the Queen of Faerie fled or killed, Ryan would not be easy to defeat, and the Dark Magician laid a trap. He captured an old baby blanket of Ryan’s, and wove an entangling spell. Ryan had no defence.”

“But he’s alive,” Jon butted in, and Amanda looked up, nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she said. “Well. Yes. As far as we know.”

“You’dknow,” Brendon said, fiercely. “ _We’d_ know if he was dead. We would. So that means—”

“Yup,” Spencer said. He felt suddenly very sure, a strange confidence growing in his chest. He looked at Amanda. “Which way to the castle?”

It took some doing that night to talk themselves out of setting off immediately; Spencer felt a horrible urgency, a _need_ to get there and get Ryan out, as soon as possible, and Jon was hovering dangerously near to the door, as if ready to charge off at any moment.

Amanda told them, though, how heavily guarded the castle was, both physically and magically, and how Ryan could be _anywhere_ in it, under intense protection, and that they had to _think_. “I get that you’re worried,” she said, fiercely. “I am too, okay, but you’ve just got to _wait_.”

Brendon looked down, hair falling in his eyes, mouth twisting downwards, and Spencer took in a breath and tried not to yell, tried not to shout about how much trouble Ryan was in, how much pain he could be in.

In the end, Jon said, quietly, “It’s hard. We’ve been looking for – for ages, now. We really need to find him.”

“I understand,” Amanda said. “But you have to trust me, and wait.” She sighed, rubbed her hands against her face, shoulders slumped in something that looked a little like defeat. After a moment, she continued. “For now, I can give you beds to sleep in, and baths if you would like them. Believe me, it’ll be better for Ryan’s sake if you just wait until you can help him properly, with less of a chance of failure, rather than charging in right now, thinking time is of the essence.”

“It _is_ ,” Spencer said.

“Yes,” Amanda agreed. “But it’s not the only thing.”

For a long while, they were all silent. Then finally Brendon looked up and sighed. “I’d like that bath, if you don’t mind,” he said, and Amanda nodded.

“Of course,” she said. “And I’ll get some food out, too.”

While Brendon took his turn in the bath, Amanda told them more about the situation, about the cold winter that had descended upon the city, indeed, the country, the slow, constant state of fear.

“It must be horrible,” Spencer said.

“It is not so much this that I am worried about,” she told him. “It’s what happens _after_ this. When everyone forgets that he is not the rightful king.”

It did not take Spencer long before he realised exactly how lucky they had been to be found by Amanda when they had. She was not only one of the last loyal Faeries left in The Green, according to her own information, but she also commanded a magic that looked as easy and effortless as Ryan’s own. (“Though I’m not as good as him,” she said, and then smiled, quick and sharp. “Mind you, nobody is.”)

It was thanks to this magic that she took to taking one of them out with her each day to get food and, on occasion, information, always under heavy disguise. (“You may be sure that the barkeeper has spread the word about you,” she said. “Now you look the same as ever, but nobody will connect you with that particular piece of information.”) Spencer was grateful for the way, if nothing else, this let him explore The Green.

The Green continued to be something entirely different, nothing like Spencer had ever thought could be possible. The landscape itself was constantly shifting; Spencer would walk up an alleyway leading to Amanda’s house from the main road, only to find himself approaching the city square, which should have been five miles in the opposite direction. There were sudden, ominous storms with lightning and rain pouring down unexpectedly, the sky almost green against black clouds, and Amanda would tell him in a low voice that the city didn’t so much appreciate being conquered.

After all the continual magic being used in it every day, she told him, the Green had become something more _alive_ ; something that could not be properly measured or understood, something that was reactive and almost conscious. Spencer thought of old legends and stories, from another world and before these wars in Faerie, about monsters of the ocean, krakens stirring from the deep.

“Do you like it?” Amanda asked him once.

Spencer hesitated, unsure if he would come off ridiculously naïve, and then shrugged it away. “I don’t really feel like it’s something to be liked,” he said, biting his lip and considering. “It feels more like something you’ve got to get along with. That you don’t have a choice about the matter.”

Amanda looked at him appraisingly. “Maybe there’s a bit of Faerie in you after all, Smith,” she said, and Spencer winked at her.

“No such thing,” he told her, and that startled a genuine, amused laugh out of her. Amanda hardly ever laughed without some rough, dark underlining; Spencer counted it a win.

He and Amanda were out one day going for food again, and the marketplace was abuzz with something, more than just the daily worry and bargaining. They were running out of food, Amanda had told them; it was somewhat normal after any major war, major rebellion – inevitably people died, innocents, people who just made food, bread, looked after livestock. People died and places were looted and for a couple of years, everyone would always be short, and hungry.

Today, though, the crowd was whispering and shuffling about something else, and there was even tentative hope and excitement in some of their eyes. Spencer began, “Maybe we should ask what’s going on,” knowing even as he said it that Amanda would shake her head, refusing to break her cardinal rule of never speaking to anyone except shopkeepers who would forget her the moment she left.

“No,” she said. “If it’s this important, I’m sure we’ll know soon enough.”

It did not take long, either – as they walked away, The Green changed in directions again, leading them down an alleyway Spencer didn’t recognise, didn’t think they’d been down before. When they were there, though, something stole his attention, and he knew without a doubt that this was what they had been talking about.

It was a huge poster, spread up along a wall. Amanda looked at it bitterly, hugging the loaf of bread to her chest. “A party,” she scoffed. “Call it a gloating session, simple fear-mongering. Inviting everyone along so they can see how powerful he is.”

Spencer stared at it, the gaudy, bright text spelling out the declaration in huge letters. “It’s still a party,” he said, slowly. “It’s a way to get into the castle.”

Amanda regarded him carefully. “With what invitation?” she asked. “Under what name?”

Spencer started to smile, grabbing her arm and dragging her along, until she hurried her pace and they came up to the stairs leading up to her home. “Every party needs some music,” he said, and Amanda started to smile, too.

Jon and Brendon looked up and Brendon was on his feet in an instant, a ready smile echoing theirs. “What’s going on?’” he asked.

“I think I’ve found a way in,” Spencer said, and told them.

“You still haven’t worked it out entirely, though,” Amanda said, after a while. “I mean – how are you going to find him?”

“You said it’s fear-mongering,” Spencer reminded her. “So isn’t there a good chance that he’ll be there? Imprisoned and – and made example of, or something?”

“Yes,” Amanda said, slowly. “But then you’re going to have to snatch him out from under their very fingers.”

“No,” Spencer disagreed. “No, we just need to get him free. And then—”

He snuck a glance at Brendon, who grinned, and then did over-exaggerated jazz hands. “ _Magic_ ,” Brendon said, and hummed a quick, jaunty tune. Amanda started to smile.

“With music?” she asked. “You’ll have to be – no offence, it’s a good idea, but just – we study music, here. There’s an art to it, and the _King_ ,” (always that same snarl, the righteous outrage), “is no small talent. Has Ryan taught you such power? I didn’t think it was possible.”

Spencer’s heart dropped, because it was true, because Ryan hadn’t taught them anything beyond tiny childish things. How on earth were they expected to stand up to incredibly dangerous magicians with the weird, lilting rhythms Ryan used to sing with them, Spencer wondered, with rounds that sounded beautiful but were, he guessed, essentially worthless.

Brendon just shook his head, though, eyes determined. “We’ll give them something different,” he said. “Something they don’t know how to deal with. But Ryan will.”

“What?” Jon asked, and Brendon told them. After a moment, they began to smile.

“Well,” Amanda said. “I’ll hunt up some instruments.”

Spencer hadn’t been sure how she planned to do it, and he still didn’t know how she’d pulled it off, but hunt up instruments Amanda did, returning triumphantly with a guitar and a tambourine and an accordion, which they distributed accordingly. Spencer said, “Maybe we should practice,” but Brendon shook his head, looking regretful.

“I think it’s a bad idea,” he said. “If I’m right, if it’s the kind of magic, then – they’ll hear it. And we’ll get found out before we started. D’you know the chords, Jon?”

“Pretty sure,” Jon said. “C, D7 and G on that last line of the chorus, right?”

“Right,” Brendon said, and grinned at them all, baring his teeth.

It was hard, not practicing; Spencer sang it in his head and then tapped along, but Brendon was insistent that they not even hum it, and he kept trying to hum by accident, so in the end he gave up, and forbade himself from even touching the tambourine. In the meantime, Amanda briefed them on what they should do, what they would be able to do – “It’ll be in a big hall,” she said, “And you’ll only really have the chance to do one song.” She took them to be registered, too, which Spencer appreciated, especially because she was shaking when they came back, and it was only really then that Spencer began to understand just how much she hated the usurpers of the throne, not just for Ryan’s sake or her own (she had been, she told them, a high member of the Faerie Court) but for the sake of all of Faerie, and its people.

It was nerve wracking, in the week leading up to the party. Spencer had nightmares that they managed to break Ryan out of some kind of dungeon only to be caught on the way out, or that Brendon couldn’t sing, or that Brendon _could_ sing but halfway through he turned into a dragon who turned on them and had been the evil magician all along, and then he had a mild panic attack and had to wake Amanda up to check that the unlawful King couldn’t see into their dreams and find treason lurking there (he couldn’t, Amanda told him, in a way that would probably be amused if she wasn’t so grumpy at being woken up).

The day of the party was grey and cold, and Spencer woke up too early, and then couldn’t get back to sleep; he came out at what he thought was something like five a.m. to find Jon and Brendon sitting by the embers of the fire, talking in low voices. When he came in, they looked up and made room for him, with twin sheepish grins. Spencer didn’t talk, too tired, too sick with nerves, but he leaned on Jon’s shoulder and Brendon gripped his hand, nails biting into Spencer’s skin and leaving white, crescent shaped marks, something for Spencer to run his fingers over absently for the rest of the morning.

Amanda made them leave early, because there would be many musicians playing, she told them, wanting to gain favour from this new King, and they didn’t want to have to sit outside the Great Hall for ages waiting their turn. They weren’t the first in line, but they weren’t anywhere near the back of the line, either, and when they were given the order of performances, Spencer swallowed, nerves making his stomach twist queasily: they were to be the fifth act.

“I can’t stay with you,” Amanda told them. “They know I’m not a musician, but I’m going to slip inside the hall, okay? Good luck.” She hugged each of them quickly, bumping a bruising kiss against their cheekbones, and took a breath, looking at them with eyes that were frightened and desperate and still so, so proud.

“We’ll beat them,” Spencer said, voice low, and Amanda touched his cheek.

“You already have,” she said, and then rocked back on her heels, looked at them with something akin to marvel. “Three humans,” she murmured, “Who would have thought it?”

“Hey,” Jon said, faux affronted, and then Amanda smiled and turned around and was gone, and they were on their own, until the Faerie standing at the door nodded at them and said, “You’re next.”

One song, Amanda had said, and then they’ll realise that you’re not real Faerie musicians, and kick you out, or worse, keep you there. One song, and it was all Spencer could think of, except also Ryan, somewhere in there, alone and not alone and maybe frightened, too, and Spencer wanted to _kill_ them, not play a goddamn tambourine.

Instead, though, he just followed Brendon and Jon, and then sucked in a breath, because sure enough Ryan was there, chained beside the throne in ragged clothes, head drooping, looking pale and sick and far away, too distant, like maybe he didn’t care about anything, like maybe he was dying. It was like a punch to the stomach, and Spencer felt the wind go out of him, but he concentrated on Brendon with his head held high, and they went and stood in front of the false king, bowed.

Brendon was saying something, something flamboyant and exaggerated, waving his hand and bowing around his accordion, and Ryan looked up. His face was blank, and when Spencer met his eyes, there was no recognition there. Spencer swallowed, took in a deep breath, and hoped so hard, so hard.

Brendon led them back to the stage area in the middle of the room, surrounded on all sides by a foreign, unfriendly Faerie court, with Amanda tucked into the corner, hair falling dark around her face, eyes sure, trusting. Spencer swallowed hard and shook his tambourine, counting out the beats, and then Jon kicked in with his guitar and Brendon took a deep breath.

For a moment, Spencer was a little afraid that Brendon wasn’t going to be able to do it, that Brendon – who had always been the most affected by Ryan, who maybe, if Spencer was completely honest and unselfish, needed him most – wouldn’t have the guts or the voice to pull it off, not with Ryan so unhappy and hurt in front of them, and a hundred enemies with more power than them crowding around and staring. Brendon’s voice, though, was clear and true, and he raised his head to the hidden sky and half-sang, half-told, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”

Spencer wasn’t sure what he had been expecting – the palace to fall away and crumble at the first words, Ryan to be free, the Magician King to scream and throw them out. Nothing happened, though, just that their little song, their little band sounded too small in the big hall, and Spencer thought, wildly, _one song, one song_ , and wanted maybe to run away (but didn’t, because Brendon sounded so true, so determined when he sang, _no one you can save that can’t be saved_ ).

Brendon kept singing, and they kept playing, but nothing was happening, Spencer thought desperately, exchanging a glance with Jon, Ryan wasn’t even paying attention, curled around himself while the King looked bored. When they got to the chorus, Spencer hoped again for a moment, but still there was nothing, and by the last line of it even Brendon sounded kind of dispirited.

And then – suddenly the light looked weird, not very noticeably, just enough for Spencer to blink. It looked slightly green in a way, playing around Ryan’s wrists, his ankles, and Spencer exchanged another look with Jon. Jon was biting his lip, like he was trying not to smile, and warmth spread in Spencer’s chest, and he struck the tambourine a little more fiercely.

He wondered if he should point it out to Brendon, if maybe it was just coincidental and would only accidentally put Brendon off. By the next line, though, it was clear that Brendon was smiling too, and Spencer looked at Ryan’s wrists again, that strange, green light, darkening now, the air shimmering around him, and surely they weren’t the only ones who had noticed, but no one made any move, no one took their eyes away from the silly little human band.

Then Brendon raised his head and wailed, “It’s _easy_!” and the hall exploded with sound.

  
[   
](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/184955.html#06)   


Ryan was climbing slowly to his feet, and Spencer saw now that it wasn’t green light at all: they were leaves, the chains that had bound him transformed. Ryan shook them off easily as the windows exploded, shards of glass flying outwards, the roof shaking dangerously, and the people around them were shouting and crying out in fear and anger, but Spencer and Jon and Brendon played on, that same triumphant chorus, again and again.

Ryan took a few calm steps forward, and Spencer wanted to shout out to him in caution, because already there were Faeries racing towards him, the King standing up in fury and horror on his throne, but Ryan didn’t need him to. The strings that had come out of nowhere and played on their own provided a rushing, swelling soundtrack, and Ryan raised his hands and the people coming towards him stopped in their tracks, unable to move.

Spencer blinked and realised that their feet had taken root, that their bodies were changing, stretching up, turning, shifting, and then they were _trees_ , growing so fast and bursting through a ceiling that suddenly wasn’t strong enough to hold firm. Spencer laughed out loud and joined in the chorus, crappy singing voice and all, and Jon was beaming, and Brendon looked fierce and joyous and proud, and everywhere Faeries were changing, turning into trees or vines and the stone roof was falling in pieces around them, but never on them, safe and protected in the middle of a storm.

And Ryan was walking towards them. Spencer looked at Brendon and saw it then, for sure, in his eyes, no doubt or questions. It was maybe a sort of declaration, Spencer thought.

Ryan opened his mouth and called across the hall, “Love is all you need,” and Brendon laughed out loud and sang it back, and Ryan echoed him, and walked closer. Other people were melting from the walls, Amanda walking forward to join them, and they sounded more slapdash than ever, now, but still real and full and a thousand magical instruments from nowhere backing them up, and the King was standing surrounded and imprisoned by a circle of cypress trees and oh, Spencer thought, oh, they did it.

There were so many people singing now, having learned the words just from the repetition, and so it didn’t really matter when Brendon dropped out, reaching out and clutching at Ryan’s arms, his shirt, tugging him in close and bending his forehead against Ryan’s collarbone. Ryan looked fierce and hungry and afraid and Spencer dropped his tambourine and came in close, Jon on the other side, and all four of them hung on, Ryan’s fingers biting hard into Spencer’s skin through his shirt. He would have bruises, he thought, and didn’t mind.

“Are you alright?” Ryan asked, voice low in Spencer’s ear, just carrying over the music, and Spencer raised his head and grinned at him, nodded.

“Now we are,” he said, and Ryan let out a shuddering breath. “You?”

“Been better,” Ryan told him, smiling wryly, but he looked okay, Spencer thought, he looked somehow more intense and _present_ ,and Spencer didn’t have to worry anymore, he didn’t, he didn’t. He pressed closer.

“They didn’t,” Jon said, and Ryan shook his head.

“Not much,” he said, and the corner of his mouth twisted up in a harsh smile. “I had to be presentable for the public. I’m glad you came today, and not tomorrow, though.”

Spencer watched as Brendon shivered and leaned in closer, and Ryan ducked his head for a moment, mouth open against Brendon’s hair, eyes closed. “Thanks,” he murmured, and Spencer nodded wordlessly.

“Sorry it took us so long,” Jon said. He was looking at Ryan in an awed kind of way, rubbing his knuckles along Ryan’s shoulder in a way that Spencer guessed was unconscious.

Ryan shook his head, smiling. “Right on time,” he said, and the strains of the song went on around them, sung by a hundred Faerie voices, beautiful and frightening and like nothing any human could truly imagine, but by then, none of them were listening.

  
[](http://softlyforgotten.livejournal.com/185564.html)   


Eventually, the song died down, the room falling into a steady murmur of voices, and Ryan stepped back from them, turned around and raised his hand a little; the trees parted, and the erstwhile King came stumbling out, ragged and frightened and furious. Spencer looked around and noticed all the different faces, that half of the Court had been replaced, and that they all had unblinking gazes of condemnation trained on Ryan’s old apprentice.

“James,” Ryan said slowly, starting across the ground towards him. “You have caused quite some trouble. You have also broken the decree of banishment. What will I do with you now?”

“Death,” someone called from the sidelines, and the magician – _James_ , Spencer thought, such a silly, human name – flinched and held himself straight, savage and unrepentant. He looked a little like a wolf, long dark hair curling at his shoulders, eyes dark and cruel in a thin face.

James met Ryan’s eyes evenly, even as a snarl curled around his mouth. Spencer was distantly aware that he was shaking, pressed up in the middle of Jon and Brendon, all three of them wide-eyed and with a sure sense of not belonging here, of being out of place.

“You can do what you like with me,” James said, and swept Ryan a mocking bow. “I will not beg.”

“I didn’t think so,” Ryan said. He looked taller than usual, easily, lazily powerful, prowling towards James in a leisurely sort of a way, as if he was quite enjoying the effect he had. That difference struck Spencer again, in the way Ryan carried himself, in the way he looked; it wasn’t necessarily good, but at least Spencer didn’t have to worry about him falling over or something.

Then, though, Amanda stepped out from the corner she had been leaning in, watching the events. “Not death,” she said, voice carrying rich and vibrant across the ruined hall. “It’s bad luck to renew a kingdom on blood.”

Ryan looked at her and stopped, his eyes wide, and as Spencer stared, the rest of the hall followed his gaze and murmured to each other, shifting, unsure, hopeful. Amanda looked different too, all of a sudden; taller, prouder, and she was beautiful in a slightly frightening way all of a sudden.

Ryan inclined his head slightly. “I am your servant,” he said, and it was weird, hearing Ryan talk like that, Ryan’s low, familiar monotone mixed with archaic words that had some strange sense of power to them. Spencer swallowed hard and wanted to go home.

“Change him,” Amanda said, and James started forward and then Ryan raised his hands again, and there was that same shift, and then James was changing and growing, face still haughty and beyond them, now, until he had no face at all, only branches. The oak tree grew fast and shot up through the ceiling, until it looked centuries of years old, roots cracking the stone paving, and the hall began to look like it had been abandoned and overgrown a long, long time ago.

“It is well done,” Amanda decided, and Ryan turned to her, still looking awed, and maybe a little nervous.

“I did not know – he told us that you were dead,” he said, and then flushed and added, “Majesty,” and Spencer jolted, staring at Amanda.

Amanda turned and grinned at them, suddenly impish again. “I was only waiting,” she said. “I also owe a debt to your friends.”

Ryan looked over at them, and the corner of his mouth twitched up into a grin. “Wow,” he said, and Brendon laughed, sudden and warm in that destroyed, reborn hall.

It became increasingly clear that they were going to have to stay for longer than any of them had expected. They were given luxurious rooms that looked like something out of a period movie, and Ryan spent about fifteen minutes with them before someone came and called for him and he had to rush off, looking apologetic.

The next day, they set out looking for him only to be told that Ryan was doing tours of the castle, to see what needed repairs – no, they couldn’t go and find him. The day after that, Ryan was locked in meetings with councils all day, and the next morning, Jon told them that Ryan had come in at about two in the morning to talk, Jon the only one of them still awake.

Brendon had looked rebellious and surly. “How long did he stay?” he asked, and Jon shrugged, looked down, murmured something about ten minutes.

Ryan was seemingly needed everywhere, and though he checked in with them wherever he could, he was rushing from spot to spot so fast that Spencer still hadn’t really had a chance to ask if he was okay. Spencer, Brendon and Jon were left with nothing to do except explore the castle (which got boring surprisingly quickly, especially with the never-ceasing curiousity they were met with by the other people there, who were always staring), because Ryan had told them that they couldn’t leave and go back into The Green, the rebellion still too close, too dangerous. Even Amanda wasn’t there to hang out with, busy as she was reclaiming her throne.

Spencer was almost grateful the day Ryan came with an impassive Faerie by his side and asked them to go out on horseback and bring the news of the defeat of the erstwhile King to ten tiny villages nearby The Green who were yet to hear. He nodded with Jon and tried his best to look determined, even though more and more often he was feeling small and bewildered, like a child lost and trampled underfoot.

Brendon, though, didn’t bother trying to look determined, just stared at Ryan with incredulous disbelief and then real hurt. Just as Ryan paused to draw breath, Brendon made a face like he couldn’t hold it in anymore, and choked out, “ _Ryan_.”

Ryan’s gaze softened, and he touched Brendon’s cheek with his fingers just briefly before he turned and hurried away.

The thing was, Spencer thought, Ryan was so _different_ in Faerie. He seemed suddenly more distinct, outlined darker, filled with brighter colours, and he looked older, too (though his face remained younger). He almost crackled with power, and Spencer sort of felt like his every easy touch should be an electric shock. He looked every inch the great magician Spencer had imagined as a child in storybooks, exactly what Ryan in Thornton Hill _hadn’t_ been, and Spencer could see why people would flock to be his apprentice, could see, too, why with such power one had wanted to be better, had wanted to take hold of the things that Ryan, for the code he lived under, would not.

It was clear, too, that this was what Ryan had always been like, that it was them who had a different impression of Ryan. People were deferential, almost afraid of him, and he gave orders without thinking, an effortless sort of authority. Spencer would watch from across a room as he carelessly dropped his cloak into the hands of a page and swept into a chair, snatching a goblet of wine from another servant and demanding that maps of Faerie be brought to the War Room. Spencer remembered Ryan carefully hanging his potions smock on the hallway peg and offering visitors tea and biscuits and found it almost impossible to reconcile the two in his head. He wondered if things could ever be the same; if Ryan would still want to play shopkeeper, and drink tea, and write harmless little spells that helped you find your car keys.

One afternoon, though, the three of them were sitting in the library, backs propped up against some shelves, when a group of people with Ryan at the head swept in and sat down at the long table next to them. Brendon looked at them with longing and anger at the same time, and Jon said, uneasily, “Uh, do you need us to—”

“No, it’s fine,” Ryan said, and they sank back down.

Brendon muttered, “Oh, so finally we’re allowed to be in the presence of His Great Majesty,” and Spencer looked at him, surprised; he hadn’t noticed Brendon getting so annoyed. He looked at Jon, who just shrugged helplessly, and settled back with him.

Spencer had meant to listen, really, but the library was warm and comfortable and the conversation at the table was really boring, actually, the driest politics he could imagine about people he didn’t know in places he didn’t know, and after a while he surprised himself by drifting off to sleep. He didn’t know how long he slept, drifting in and out of half-vivid dreams, but finally he realised he was lying awake with Jon and Brendon sleeping quietly on each of his shoulders, and Amanda was talking, sounding careful.

“I don’t need to tell you, of course,” she said, “how appreciated your presence would be, Ryan. It’s going to take months, if not years, for Faerie to get over this rebellion, for everything to be restored to any form of normal. You would be of infinite use—”

“—and _necessity_ ,” someone interjected, and Spencer felt his stomach sink.

“But,” Amanda continued, ignoring the interruption, “We are, of course, aware that you left Faerie of your own will a long time ago, and that it was not your wish to return here in the first place. We leave the choice entirely in your hands.”

Spencer opened his eyes just in time to catch Ryan’s gaze lingering on him. He stared back, unsure what to do or say, and Ryan smiled, very small and very quick, and familiar, too, the kind of smile that was still unsure of its own welcome.

“I thank you for your esteem,” Ryan said quietly, turning his attention back to the people seated at the table. “But I am afraid that staying in Faerie is, for me, not an option.”

There was a murmuring rumble of displeasure at the table, and one Faerie councillor said, coldly, “I am sorry, Magician, is there some curse laid upon you that we are not aware of?”

“No,” Ryan said. “Not a curse at all,” and Spencer closed his eyes, drifted back to sleep.

When he woke up again, it was only Amanda who was left, gathering her things. “Hey,” Spencer croaked, and Amanda turned and smiled at him.

“Afternoon,” she said, and pulled a chair close to them, sat down on it.

“I should probably apologise,” Spencer told her, grinning, “For not calling you by your traditional title and stuff.”

Amanda nodded solemnly, eyes dancing. “Also that time you punched me in the arm when you got excited about something,” she reminded him.

Spencer laughed, and then added, a little quieter, “And for stealing your Court Magician, maybe.”

“No,” Amanda said, “No, for that, I should probably apologise to you, for borrowing him for so long.”

He laughed again and then shrugged Jon and Brendon awake, making them stir. “As long as we get him back,” he said, honestly, and Brendon made a grumpy, agreeing noise through a yawn, apparently guessing what they were talking about.

“Yes,” Amanda said, and then hesitated. “I want to thank you,” she told them, quietly. “You gave me my kingdom back.”

Spencer shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sure you would have managed it eventually.”

“Maybe,” she said, “But very possibly not. I owe you a favour, you three. Do not think I will forget it.”

Brendon said, half-seriously, “Don’t suppose you could get Ryan to hurry the fuck up and come home, could you?” and Amanda grinned.

“Really, Brendon,” she said. “You think _I_ have any influence over him?”

“You’re the Queen of Faerie,” Jon pointed out blearily, as though she might have forgotten it.

Amanda shrugged, standing up. “He’s Ryan Ross,” she said, and then, “I’ll see you later. Remember what I said. You don’t have to decide now. We have long memories, and you need only call me when the time comes.”

“Bye,” Spencer said, and then she was gone.

It took them longer than Spencer liked to admit to realise that Brendon was gone. He slept in, and then it took him a while to find Jon (downstairs, breakfasting with a crowd of talkative pixies, who perched on the ends of their chairs and regarded Jon and Spencer with bright, inquisitive eyes), and it was easy to imagine that Brendon was just somewhere in the castle. The last week had gone by in a blur of too long, tedious days, and they were sick of each other’s company in some ways, wandering off to be on their own quite frequently, or finding new nooks and crannies of the castle to hide in.

At first he even thought that Brendon might be with Ryan, but then they passed a dark room lined with shelves and Ryan was sitting in there surrounded by a bunch of old councillors and Amanda down one end of the table, and the door was firmly closed to them, with no sign of Brendon in there.

Then at midday, Brendon wasn’t in the place they’d arranged, and Spencer started to worry. He and Jon exchanged a glance and then set off on a hunt through the castle, up and down the stairs, in the library, through every room they’d be in, trekking down to the kitchens and up to the room with the piano in it that Brendon had spent hours on the other day.

It was almost five o’clock by Spencer’s reckoning – even though time was different in Faerie, but in any case, it was winter and starting to get dark outside, so Spencer felt it justified – when they finally stopped. Jon turned to him and said, “Well?”

“Come on,” Spencer said, heart heavy, and they went back down to the room Ryan was still ensconced in. They knocked on the door and were let in to a round of glares from the councillors, with only Amanda impassive and Ryan looking surprised.

“What is it?” he asked, and Spencer looked down.

It was Jon who answered. “We can’t find Brendon,” he said. “We think he might be – not in the castle.”

Ryan’s face went stony. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them, and maybe his face was blank but Spencer’s stomach twisted anyway, because he had never seen Ryan look so furious in his life, so cold and so angry.

“No,” Ryan said. “He’s not in the castle. How long has he been gone?”

“All day,” Spencer admitted. “Is he – he might be in trouble?”

“It seems likely,” Ryan said, and then turned on his heel and swept out of the room. Jon and Spencer hurried to catch up with him, and so did the rest of the councillors, Amanda coming a little way behind them, until a crowd was hurrying to keep up as Ryan walked down the hallway.

They walked out onto the cobbled stones of the courtyard, the council at his shoulders fretting and talking quickly amongst themselves, horrible words like _bounties_ and _loyalists_ and _revenge_ being thrown around until Spencer wanted to turn around and punch them in the face in an effort to make them shut up. Instead, he kept up with Jon, their shoulders bumping, and Jon looked at him, said nothing, but Spencer saw the worry there, too.

“Just wait,” he murmured. “Just – don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ll find him.”

One of the councillors pushed past and started talking quickly to Ryan, a long, somewhat nervous speech about hostage negotiations and the need to be careful, how the regime is not yet strong enough to go to war over a human life, chaos must be avoided as much as possible in these early days, and Ryan nodded, eyes dark.

Emboldened, the councillor added, “Maybe it would be best if we just went back inside and waited for some sort of information, or a ransom demand or something—”

Ryan stopped short in his tracks, and turned on the councillor. “None of you,” he said, calmly, “Have been listening to anything I’ve said, have you?”

The same councillor dared to raise the point that Ryan hadn’t said anything; Amanda made a twisting, half-amused face and Spencer felt dread settle on around his shoulders. Ryan’s face was dark and furious and frightening, and he started walking again, towards the city.

“I will find them,” he snarled. “I will _burn this city down_ , and I will find them, and when I do I will _kill them_.”

Overhead, storm clouds were gathering; the sky was eerie and green, lit up as lightning flashed and huge winds picked up. Spencer prepared himself for rain but none came, though the wind was huge and the thunder cracked and boomed overhead, closer and more terrifying than any storm in Thornton Hill, more than the storm they had sheltered from that first night in Faerie, worse than anything.

Behind him, a Faerie said in a low voice, “I suppose we had better prepare ourselves for a war, then.”

Spencer shivered and pressed closer to Jon, and missed Thornton Hill suddenly with a sudden rush of love, more than he had in years, missed Thornton Hill and who Ryan was when they were there, where he was both quieter and realer, less of some strange myth. The noise of the storm was picking up.

Then, anti-climatic and unexpected, a small figure appeared at the top of the hill that led down to the castle and wound his way down towards them. His shoulders were hunched against the wind, his steps slow, and Ryan watched, white-faced and unmoving.

When Brendon was close enough, he yelled over at them, half-laughing, “Man, the weather here is _fucked_ —” and then trailed off, raising an eyebrow at the sight of Ryan.

Ryan looked at him and said, very calmly, “You’re a motherfucking moron.” Then he walked away, the storm following him and then dying completely.

Brendon’s mouth twisted – he looked confused and annoyed and on the verge of angry, and Jon let out a shuddering breath that sounded suspiciously close to _that was close_. Spencer just watched Ryan, and understood what Brendon and Jon couldn’t, because he saw Ryan’s hands as he walked away, before Ryan shoved them in his pockets, how badly they were trembling.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/19.png)yan wasn’t talking to him.

Brendon wasn’t, if he was completely honest with himself, very good at dealing with Ryan not talking to him for whatever reason, but when it was something like this, something that was completely and totally _not Brendon’s fault_ , it made him really fucking pissed.

Jon had told him about how they’d gone and told Ryan when they couldn’t find him – and _honestly_ , he’d just gotten bored of the castle and gone for a walk, he didn’t see why it was such a big deal – and how angry Ryan had been, and Brendon kind of thought that was really fucking typical. Typical of Ryan being strange and pretty much an asshole here, all pretentious and full of himself and completely closed to compromise, typical of this stupid place with all these rules that were worse than home, because at least at Thornton Hill they were obvious and Brendon knew how to deal with them, typical of this whole, awful situation. He’d thought that they’d come here, have some adventures, get Ryan out, go home. He hadn’t imagined having to stick around for what felt like years, waiting for Ryan to set up some sort of government. Brendon couldn’t imagine him doing that and ever, ever being done.

He especially hadn’t imagined having to deal with all of it with Ryan angry and not talking to him, and generally being a huge condescending asshole, and so after a day of it, he headed off to Ryan’s room and waited, sitting still on the bed. There was the same cold anger in him that he had felt the day his parents told him maybe it was better if he left the family, for a while, and he was really goddamn sick of Ryan playing self-righteous here.

When Ryan came in, he blanched and then stilled, looked at Brendon expressionlessly. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Oh, you are an _asshole_ ,” Brendon said, and they were off.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing here!” Ryan yelled, a little while later. “You plunge off all fucking heroic and shit – and let’s try not to get started on how stupid _that_ was—”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m really sorry for saving you, Ryan!” Brendon snapped. “God, that was low, you’re right—”

“You have _no idea_ how lucky you were!” Ryan told him, wild-eyed. “You could have died a hundred times over, all three of you, it was the stupidest shit you’ve ever pulled—”

“We didn’t have a _choice_!”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “You did. Don’t make it like that – I didn’t, didn’t force or expect anything, I—”

“Fuck you, Ryan,” Brendon said, eyes hot and prickly. “We _didn’t_. It was you.”

Ryan went still for a moment and then he took a breath and started up again with, “And here, you’re just – you’re being stupid, you think it’s some kind of story—”

“I don’t,” Brendon snarled. “Stories are _interesting_. I’m sick of being cooped up in here, we’ve been here forever—”

“That doesn’t mean you can just wander off!” Ryan shouted. “It’s dangerous, Brendon, for fuck’s sake, are you a complete idiot? You don’t have anything to protect you except me, and I didn’t even know!”

“What do you _want_ us to do?” Brendon demanded. “Sit around waiting for you all the time? Maybe you’re right, maybe we shouldn’t have bothered coming to get you, seeing as you clearly prefer this goddamn place.”

“I have a _responsibility_ ,” Ryan told him, glaring. “They’ve just been through an evil fucking rebellion, okay, and a huge chunk of that is my fault, I have to stick around and help fix things!”

Brendon took a huge, shuddering breath. “Why don’t you just _stay_ , then,” he said, coldly. “We’ll go home on our own, we don’t need _you_.”

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?” Ryan asked, voice rising again. “It’s not safe! It’s not – just because you’ve got by on pure dumb luck so far, which, by the way, going off to wander around The Green just because you were a bit bored was possibly the dumbest thing of all – it’s not safe. You need _me_ to get you back—”

Brendon felt suddenly tired. “Can’t you just magic us away? Or – or Aman—her Majesty can, maybe, she told us that she owed us a favour.” He stopped and drew in a breath, because he couldn’t quite believe that it had gotten this far, that they were negotiating a way for them to go back to Thornton Hill without Ryan. Brendon wasn’t even sure that Thornton Hill could exist for him anymore without Ryan.

“I – if that’s what you want,” Ryan said, and his face was white, eyes huge and dark. “If that’s what you want me to—” and Brendon gave up on trying to win some kind of fight.

“I want you to come _home_ ,” Brendon told him, voice spilling out fast and desperate. “I want all of us to just – you’re frightening here, Ryan, and you – I don’t even know whether you love this place or hate it, but I can’t do it anymore, it’s too weird.”

Ryan was quiet for a long while, face unreadable, and Brendon sighed and sank down on the bed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was so _tired_ ; this place felt like it demanded too much energy, too much intensity, and Brendon just wanted to go home.

After a moment, Ryan came and sat next to him on the bed. He reached for Brendon’s hand, but Brendon curled his fingers into a fist, and Ryan stilled for a moment, then wrapped long fingers around Brendon’s wrist, and held him so tight.

“Brendon,” he said, quietly. “You can’t do that again. I’m trying to get us home, but I’ve got to fix the kingdom, and I can’t do that if I’m terrified. Okay?”

Brendon looked at him, startled, and Ryan looked back, steadily. After a moment, Brendon swallowed and nodded. “Okay,” he said.

“I’ll be – I’m going to try and speed things up a bit,” Ryan said, and he turned into Brendon, pushed him backwards until he could sit comfortably facing Brendon, resting his forehead on Brendon’s collarbone. Brendon sat very still for a moment, and then sighed and reached up, stroked his fingers through Ryan’s soft hair. Ryan whispered, “I want to go home, too.”

“Yeah,” Brendon said. He swallowed hard and added, the words sticking in his throat, “Probably chucking tantrums about it wasn’t the best way to go.”

“I’ve always thought you were immature,” Ryan said, and looked up, smiled. Brendon felt something in him steady, some wild, volatile impulse calming down. “It’s getting kind of late,” Ryan told him. “Want to stay here, tonight?”

“It’s about eight o’clock,” Brendon told him, nonplussed, but after a moment he kicked off his shoes and pants and crawled in under the covers with Ryan, closing his eyes and pretending they were home. It was easier here, with the lights flickering off and Ryan soft and sleepy by his side, one hand hanging loosely onto Brendon’s elbow.

“How long do you think it’ll be?” Brendon asked, trying not to be too whiny but too hopeful to be silent, and Ryan stirred, opened his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sorry. I’ll do my best, though.”

“They really like you here,” Brendon said, softly, and Ryan grimaced.

“I’m really glad you brought the Queen,” he told him. “They would probably have set me up to be King or something, otherwise. They’re still pressuring me to stay as Court Magician.”

Brendon shivered. “But you won’t?”

“No,” Ryan said. “I left Faerie a long time ago.” He paused. “It’s weird, being back.”

“Your face is weird,” Brendon said automatically, and Ryan swatted him.

“Shut up,” Ryan said. “Go to sleep.”

“At _eight o’clock_ ,” Brendon reminded him, but he curled in closer anyway, and closed his eyes. For a little while, everything was soft and calm and peaceful in the blue light, Ryan breathing next to him. Brendon’s mind was still working quickly though, and he asked, almost by accident, “Were you really that frightened?”

Ryan didn’t answer at first, and Brendon flushed a little bit. Then Ryan’s grip on Brendon’s elbow tightened, and he said, voice low, “Yes.”

Brendon nodded. “Sorry,” he said.

“Yeah.” Ryan’s voice was kind of rough. “Just. Don’t do it again. Or take me with you, next time.”

“Alright,” he said peaceably, and then he curled close and surprised himself by falling asleep pretty easily, despite the time.

Brendon had been expecting to settle in for another wait while Ryan got things moving, but apparently once Ryan made up his mind, things started happening really quickly. After two days, most of the Faerie Court had a somewhat bewildered, harried expression on and after three, Ryan started to look more confident than ever, eyes sharp and mouth half-smiling.

On the fourth day, he came up to Jon, Spencer and Brendon when they were eating breakfast, talking idly and trying to ignore the stares they still got from people passing through, and grinned at them. “Pack your shit,” he said. “We’re leaving tomorrow.” Then he was gone.

Brendon blinked and turned back to them, slowly, grinning. “Well,” he said, and Spencer burst out laughing, smiled at him.

“He’s like a force of nature,” Spencer said, still laughing, clasping his hands beneath his chin and fluttering his eyelashes exaggeratedly in Ryan’s wake.

“I wonder if we should be worried,” Jon said, and Brendon turned, still grinning, to respond, but Jon wasn’t smiling.

Brendon blinked, raised his eyebrows. “Are you serious?” he asked, and laughed a little stupidly. “I don’t – what are you talking about, Jon?”

Jon looked unhappy. “I just – it’s weird, he’s so different here,” he said. “I still kind of think that maybe we should just ask Amanda to send us home and, and meet Ryan there.”

Brendon stared. “He’s our _friend_.”

“I – he’s not the one we made friends with when he’s here, though,” Jon said, and he looked unsure and upset, but he wasn’t backing down, either. A horrible coldness spread in Brendon’s chest. “I don’t know if maybe we can trust—”

“Shut up,” Brendon said quickly. “Don’t.”

“Brendon,” Jon said. “The thing is, we got here by – by pretending we were in a fairytale or whatever, but it’s not like that, this place is dangerous. These _people_ are dangerous, and it’s like – I’m just not entirely sure. What if you and Ryan fought again, and he lost his temper? Or, or who knows what might be following him for revenge?”

“So we just _leave_ him?” Brendon demanded, and Jon folded his arms, looked stubborn.

“You can’t make me into the bad guy here,” he said. “I’m just saying it’s not all as easy as you want it to be, it’s not. You can’t turn it into that, Brendon, no matter how much you want to, he’s not – he’s just different here, okay, we don’t _know_ him.”

“He’s not a _tame_ lion,” Spencer murmured. Brendon ignored him.

“You’re making _Ryan_ into the bad guy,” Brendon said hotly. “You’re the one who—”

“For fuck’s sake, calm down,” Jon said, mulish. “Just open your mind up to—”

“I don’t need to,” Brendon interrupted, clenching his fists. “I _trust_ him, he’s always been—”

“Okay, Brendon, I get it!” Jon exploded. “Just _open your eyes_ , okay, and stop judging mejust because _I’m_ not in love with him!”

Brendon stared at him for a moment, and then turned on his heel and walked away.

Brendon sat in the library between two shelves, back pressed up to the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, furious and shaking. Fucking Jon, he thought, fucking, fucking Jon, and he kind of wanted to go find Ryan, except obviously he _couldn’t_. _Fucking_ Jon.

After a little while, though, Jon turned around the corner and sighed, slipping down to sit next to him. “Fuck off,” Brendon said, jaw clenched.

“Hey, no,” Jon said, regretful. “I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have said that.”

Brendon didn’t say anything, just tucked his chin on his knees and turned away from Jon, back hunched. Jon put a warm, smooth hand on his back and Brendon shook him off, repeated, “Fuck _off_.”

“No,” Jon said, and moved closer, pressing up against Brendon’s side. He said, quietly, “I was in the wrong there, Brendon. But you’re really shitty at accepting apologies sometimes, and I kinda think that’s a little bit why you hate Thornton Hill so often.” He paused, and then, when Brendon didn’t say anything, kept talking, voice low and soothing. “I’m not – I don’t want you to shut me off, Brendon. You did it to the town, but don’t—”

“You’re blaming _me_ for that?” Brendon asked incredulously when he couldn’t keep it in any longer, and Jon shook his head wildly.

“No!” he said. “No, they’re – you know I think they’re assholes, they were stupid and petty and _wrong_ , but I – I also think that you’re really hard to fight with. I think sometimes maybe you just need to be more… open.”

Brendon looked up at him, mouth twisting unhappily. “That was shitty,” he told Jon. “What you said. I don’t throw crap like that in your face.”

“I know,” Jon said. “Sorry. I was frustrated. It was a cheap shot.”

“I don’t get why you think he’s so dangerous,” Brendon said.

“Yes, you do,” Jon corrected. “But you’re right, too. He’s our friend. He just – he scares me, here.”

Brendon looked at Jon and managed a small smile. “Me, too,” he admitted, and Jon smiled and put his arm around Brendon’s shoulders, dragging him into a warm, one-sided hug. Brendon sighed and put his face into Jon’s shoulder; for all that Jon had said, he was actually really hard to stay angry at.

“Then that’s why we need to take him home, I guess,” Jon said, and Brendon nodded. When he looked up, Spencer and Ryan were watching them from across the library. Home seemed closer than ever.

The next morning, Brendon was woken up by Spencer and Jon. “Time to go,” Jon said, and Brendon yawned and crawled out of bed, pulled on some pants and a hoodie, and thought a little longingly of clean clothes at home, rather than the same three outfits recycled again and again. Then his thoughts caught up with what they were doing, and he smiled.

Outside, most of the Faerie Court were waiting on the cobblestones, Ryan and Amanda standing a little way apart, heads bent together in conference. For a moment, Brendon felt out of place, but then a solemn delegation was coming up to them, a fair-haired woman thanking them for their assistance and, “For saving Faerie,” she said, “You have our eternal gratitude,” which was so beyond anything Brendon had ever experienced before that he stopped feeling awkward and started feeling somewhat dazzled.

Then Amanda and Ryan turned and walked towards them, and Brendon bowed awkwardly with Spencer and Jon, still trying to reconcile Amanda the Queen of Faerie with the woman who had bossed them around and helped them in the days leading up to Ryan’s rescue. Now, she smiled kindly at them.

“We owe you still a great debt,” she said. “One day, we hope to have the opportunity to repay it.”

“It was, uh, our pleasure,” Spencer said, stammering a little, and Brendon grinned.

“For now,” Amanda continued, “I’ve helped Ryan map out a path for you, one to take you home as quickly as possible. I won’t say goodbye. I think we will meet again.”

Jon looked quickly at each of them, smiled. “We’d like that,” he said, and Ryan bit his lip, looking torn between amused and faintly worried at the easy way they addressed the Queen.

“Good,” Amanda said, and gave them that wicked smile, the one that took away all her finery and made her something more familiar, more friendly. She laughed and said, “Good luck, boys. Try not to let Ryan get into much more trouble.”

“We’ll do our best,” Spencer told her, and Ryan folded his arms and rolled his eyes. Then Amanda came forward and kissed them all, quick and close-mouthed, and Brendon felt himself go bright red, and had the uncontrollable urge to giggle.

“Uh,” Jon said, wide-eyed, and Ryan looked a little annoyed now, slightly possessive.

“Ready?” he said, and the crowd walked with them to the gate, up the hill and through the Green, the streets giving way quickly, melting quickly into corners and short streets that led to the outskirts of the city in a short amount of time. It felt a little like a parade, and Brendon felt a little bit lost, unprotected, when finally they stopped on the very edge of the city, where the green fields started, rolling out until they came to the misty blue hills and just over them, Brendon knew, the woods that would take them back to Thornton Hill.

“Well,” Amanda said, and Ryan nodded and took his own leave of her, bowing slightly and closing his eyes when she touched his forward softly, like a blessing. “Stay safe,” she told him, and he nodded.

Then he turned and walked a few paces, face tilted up to the sky, the cold wind. After a moment he turned around again, looking surprised and said, “Well? Are you coming?”

Brendon looked at Jon, who shrugged and smiled. Spencer looked calm, peaceful, and Brendon said, “Yes.”

Ryan waited for them to be at his side before he started walking again, and then they were away.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/20.png)he walk home was easier with Ryan. The villages were different now, more cheerful, friendlier, and busier, too, with people out in the fields (“The seasons don’t really make a huge difference, here,” Ryan told them, “So the fact that it’s winter isn’t really going to put anyone off planting if they want flowers,”). Often they would stop and get talked to, and Spencer understood now why Ryan hadn’t bothered getting food supplies to bring with them – almost every time they walked past people, they were waved at and invited in for food. They stayed two nights in people’s barns, comfortable enough and with lots of blankets to keep out the cold, and one night they were even invited in to a house with a two spare guest rooms, twin beds in each.

“People put a lot more stock in hospitality here,” Spencer remarked, and Ryan looked a bit sheepish.

“Uh, I think that’s mostly just because of me,” he said. “Or maybe because the stories about you three have spread already, and they see you as heroes. People are generally as selfish or bitchy or whatever in Faerie as they are anywhere else.”

Whatever the reason, Spencer thought, it was a much nicer journey; shorter, less frightening, easier to navigate the difficult terrain with Ryan there and the ground seeming to consciously _want_ to make itself into paths for them to follow, soft underfoot. After a while, Brendon took off his shoes and walked along barefoot, and he said that he didn’t step on a sharp edge the whole time, not even as they started up towards the stony hills.

He felt easier, too, more content, although he thought that probably had a fair bit to do with not being confused and lost in a new land, with not having to worry about Ryan, somewhere half-dead or worse, captured. Ryan didn’t really talk about his imprisonment, and Spencer was torn between thinking that maybe he should, for his own sake, and being grateful that he didn’t, because the more he thought about it, the more Spencer decided that being turned into trees had been letting Ryan’s captors off too easy.

Ryan seemed calmer, though. Still different to what Spencer was used to in Thornton Hill, still vivid and intense and moody in a way that he wasn’t, back home, but he was kinder, as well, less caught up in the whirlwind of politics of the Faerie Court. Spencer was having trouble reconciling the two Ryans in his head, still, and he felt a little bad for preferring the Thornton Hill one, with all his absentmindedness and bad memory. It felt cruel to like a Ryan more if he was quieter and somehow _less_ than, but at the same time, Spencer didn’t really think that the Ryan at Thornton Hill was lesser. He just thought that maybe he was a bit wiser.

When they reached the woods, the werelights were gone. Brendon told Ryan about them anyway, exaggerating his own brilliance, and Ryan smiled. His eyes were very bright and Spencer watched him carefully, wondered, hoped. When a flurry of birds took off nearby, squalling out with song, Ryan didn’t stop to listen, just draped an arm around Brendon’s shoulders and leaned in closer so he could hear.

The last night, they slept in a heap together on the soft grass off the path, the leaves rustling above them. They talked drowsily until they fell asleep, all pressed up close together, Jon and Brendon grinning at them from the middle.

Spencer woke up in the middle of the night to see Ryan standing a little way away, his face lifted up to the stars. He sat up blearily and called softly, trying not to wake up Jon snuffling beside him, “Hey. You okay?”

Ryan turned and looked at him. “Want to come for a walk?” he asked, instead of answering, and Spencer climbed out of the pile of blankets, pulled on his shoes. His back was a little stiff as he climbed to his feet and he groaned quietly, pressing his hands to his lower back and stretching. Ryan waited and then, when Spencer came up to him, set off away from the path, wandering through the woods.

“We won’t get lost?” Spencer was pretty sure they wouldn’t, but he thought checking in case was a good idea. Ryan cast him an amused look but didn’t say anything, just shook his head, and Spencer nodded, satisfied. “Alright, then.”

They walked for a long while, Spencer still half-asleep, but not so much that he couldn’t appreciate the quiet, cold beauty of the night, the cloudless sky and the stars, the forest alive with cool winds and nocturnal creatures, an owl hooting somewhere, sweeping through the trees on silent wings.

“So,” Spencer said, eventually, and Ryan stopped and turned to look at him. Something horrible and afraid twisted in his stomach and he asked, tentatively, “Are you – do you maybe want to stay here, Ryan?”

“No,” Ryan answered, easy. “But… I think some things should be acknowledged, you know.” He leaned back against a tree, looked around. “I grew up very close to here,” he told Spencer. “That’s why I made the door open up to it.”

“Oh,” Spencer said, and looked around, imagined Ryan young and wild here, running and learning magic. He wished suddenly that he’d known Ryan as a child, wondered how much easier it would be to read Ryan’s thoughts. Then Ryan sighed and tilted away from the tree and towards Spencer, leaning close mindlessly, skin cool and smooth against Spencer’s, and Spencer thought that maybe this was good enough.

“Maybe we could go hiking or something, when we get back,” Spencer said, and then made a face. “Well. You and Jon could go hiking, you freaks, and me and Brendon can stay home and have access to like, hot baths and coffee and stuff.”

Ryan raised his head from Spencer’s shoulder and grinned at him, eyes dancing in the dim light. “I’d like that,” he said. “Probably there’s less chance of uh, your surroundings kind of… turning on you and stuff, near Thornton Hill.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Spencer said, lightly. “We’ve had our fair share of werewolves.” Ryan blinked at him, looking abruptly bewildered, and Spencer laughed. “Or stories of them, anyway, moron.”

“What, there have been crossovers into human realms,” Ryan said, crossly. “It’s a possibility!”

“I’m pretty sure ravenous half-human wolves would have provoked more than a few ghost stories,” Spencer said, and Ryan shrugged grumpily, but then laughed, and they walked on, through the night. Spencer thought of the poem they had done in high school, the way it was the only one that ever made sense, studying it in the grips of an icy Thornton Hill winter and then walking home the long way, detouring through the nearby forestland: _the woods are lovely, dark and deep/but I have promises to keep/and miles to go before I sleep/and miles to go before I sleep_.

“Come on,” Ryan said, as if hearing him. Maybe he did, Spencer thought for the second time that year, and then smiled at himself —probably Ryan would have shown much more delight over Spencer reciting poetry in his head if he actually could read Spencer’s thoughts. “We should get back and make sure the others haven’t been eaten or anything.”

“Right,” Spencer agreed, and then frowned. “Wait, they couldn’t really be eaten, though, could they? Ryan? _Ryan_?”

Ryan made a noise suspiciously close to giggling, and sped up.

It was early the next morning when Brendon said, abruptly, “I remember this place.”

Spencer looked around and realised that he did, too – more familiar than the rest of the woods, burned into his memory as it was with that first, terrifying, exhilarating sense of being somewhere entirely _other_ , somewhere frightening and more real than Spencer had ever imagined when Ryan talked about it.

“Yes,” Ryan said. “This is the place.”

Then he reached out and knocked, looking a little self-conscious, on the trunk of a tree, and a door appeared in front of them, Ryan and Brendon’s back door, standing clear and waiting in the midst of the trees.

Jon grinned. “Oh man,” he said, “I hope it’s not locked,” and Ryan laughed, stepped forward, and opened it.

It wasn’t locked.

The light was fading when they walked in, morning in Faerie but evening in Thornton Hill, and for a moment they hesitated in the doorway, caught between the two worlds. Then Ryan said, “I’ll take you back one day, if you want,” and Brendon said, firmly, “ _One_ day,” and they all stepped through, and closed the door. When Spencer peered out the window, it was just the tiny little backyard again, although there was a tall, spiky tree there that he hadn’t noticed before.

He pointed it out, and Brendon laughed, shook his head.

“That’s always been there,” he said, and grinned.

Ryan put the kettle on, because they were at a little bit of a loss for what else to do, and then Brendon went off and showered, which set Spencer and Jon on a hunt to do so as well (Jon snuck into the second bathroom before Spencer could, the sneaky bastard). When they came out, there were dry clothes waiting in the room next door, clothes Spencer was sure he had left at home, and Brendon and Ryan were sitting in the front room of the shop, Ryan looking a little sheepish and Brendon clutching the corner of the counter and wheezing a little with laughter.

“I forgot how to do a proper summoning thing,” Ryan said, “So I had to, uh, float them from your place,” and Brendon choked on air, giggling some more. Ryan cast an amused glance at him. “I think it was your jeans knocking on the door that broke him,” he confided, and Brendon slid helplessly from his stool to the floor, pressing his forehead against his knees.

After a little while Jon emerged, having enjoyed his customary hour long shower (whatever, Spencer was only exaggerating a little bit) and carrying the teapot that they had forgotten about and left sitting in the back room. They poured out coffee and grinned at each other, and to Spencer’s surprise, there was still a lot of nothing to talk about, easy conversation that referenced Faerie but wasn’t all about it, and Brendon looked sleepy and content, sliding forward on his elbows.

A little after dark, there was a knock on the front door, and Ryan went over to it, confused, the sign still flipped to _closed_. When he opened it, Frank and Mikey, covered in the telltale signs of Gerard’s paint and made up to look like friendly sorts of zombies, and beaming up at him, and at Jon, Brendon and Spencer, who were hovering around his shoulder. They chorused in perfect, cheesy unison, “Trick or treat!” (Spencer was _almost_ sure that he heard Frank add a quiet, gleeful little “motherfuckers!” after it, but he decided to remain silent.)

“Oh my God,” Brendon said. “It’s still Halloween. We only left this morning.”

Jon and Spencer turned and stared; only Ryan looked unsurprised, shrugging bony shoulders. “Time moves differently,” he said. “You can never tell where you’re going to end up when you come back.”

Frank and Mikey looked a little confused and a little annoyed by this irrelevant conversation, and Ryan looked down at them, making an uncomfortable face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know – forgot it was Halloween.” He paused and then added, slowly, “I can do a trick though.”

The two boys exchanged a look, and then shrugged. “Alright,” Mikey said agreeably, and Ryan smiled.

“You’ll have to wait, though,” he said. “Keep an eye on the sky. Have a fun night.”

“Bye,” Frank said cheerfully, and Mikey waved awkwardly, turning around.

“I can’t believe they still do Halloween,” Spencer said when Ryan closed the door, half-laughing. “They’re, what, almost fourteen?”

“It’s free food, Spence,” Jon said, rolling his eyes. “You drag that tradition out for as long as you can.”

“Right, sorry,” Spencer said. “I forgot how you only love me for my mom’s gingerbread.”

“Damn straight,” Jon said, and then brightened. “Oh man, I bet she made some, too. Let’s go over tomorrow and pick up the leftovers.” He turned and looked at Brendon. “You guys should come, too.”

Brendon looked uncomfortable. “Your mom’s on council, isn’t she?” he asked Spencer. “I have a feeling I might’ve, uh—”

“Yeah,” Spencer said, quietly. “She was there when you and your mom had that big fight.”

“Right,” Brendon said, softly, and Ryan edged in closer, eyes dark and protective.

“But,” Spencer said, “I think she’ll probably get mad if I don’t bring, like, my two best friends around some time or other,” and it was kind of amazing, how quickly Brendon flushed and then smiled, that bright, surprised light in Ryan’s eyes.

“I’ve been replaced,” Jon said, sadly. “Replaced in your affections, which I was _assured_ were steadfast – we had a _blood oath_ , Spencer.”

“Eh, well,” Spencer said, and Jon tackled him, and he was still small and sneaky enough that he could end up pinning Spencer down and making him call uncle, the fucker. Ryan and Brendon were laughing by the time Spencer finally struggled up, out of breath, and he demanded ice cream to soften his wounded pride, which Ryan duly went and fetched (returning a little puzzled – “Who messed up my library?” he asked, frowning, and Brendon looked innocent).

It was a long night, sitting around. It was so easy, suddenly, to feel at home, perched on the tall stools and laughing, as though they had never been, except for the grateful way they looked at each other, except for the way Brendon seemed reluctant to really let Ryan out of his sight. (That night, Spencer would watch as Brendon would disappear at one stage only to come back looking purposefully innocent again, and then, just as Ryan was heading to bed, Spencer brushing his teeth in the bathroom with a guestroom waiting for him, Ryan called, “Hey, has anyone seen the sheets from my bed?” Spencer supposed it was a noble offer indeed on Brendon’s part to share, that night. He also thought Ryan would have found an excuse, anyway.)

At one stage, Spencer heard someone calling out in surprise and wonder, and he turned to look out the glass front, and caught his breath – there was a shower of meteors falling, light streaking through the dark sky. For a moment, he thought about drawing the attention of the others to it, making them come outside and have a look, but then he turned back and Jon was explaining some dorky theory of his at high speed, Brendon half-asleep in his lap, and Spencer thought that maybe he was good enough where he was.

 _Keep an eye on the sky_ , Spencer suddenly remembered; he glanced up at Ryan, who winked, badly. Spencer laughed.

Spencer wasn’t sure what exactly he was expecting, with Ryan back home; an immediate transformation back to the somewhat hopeless Ryan, or something. In any case, it didn’t happen, which for a little while freaked them out, which in turn freaked _Ryan_ out, because they spent the whole time watching him and nudging each other. They sat there staring intently and watching him boil hot water for tea, whispering, “Did you see that? Did you see? No burns!”

“Oh my God,” Brendon said, wide-eyed. “He put the lid on the kettle before he boiled it!”

“You know I can _hear_ you,” Ryan said, annoyed, and they shut up for a little while, giggling, before—

“Dude. Dude. Did Ryan just remember to put his shoes on?”

“Jeez, Ryan,” Jon said, frowning. “I thought we had something _special_.”

A week after their return, though, Ryan came in to visit Spencer during his afternoon shift at the supermarket (Spencer was thinking he’d almost had enough of the supermarket, though. He’d been staying up late with Brendon recently, talking about things he actually wanted to do, maybe a course in the city, coming back down on weekends for sure, maybe even opening his own place here, a restaurant could be cool—). Spencer took one look at him and burst out laughing.

“What?” Ryan asked, bewildered. “What, I just came to say hi and get some cocoa—”

“Oh, man,” Spencer interrupted. He dropped the tag gun and stood up, hugged Ryan tight and then released him, grinning stupidly. “Ryan,” he said, “You’re still in your pajamas.”

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/21.png)iding down hills was always a challenge, especially since Ryan had given fixing the brakes on his bike a shot and somehow managed to make them even worse, so that it seemed putting any kind of pressure on them at all made the bike careen even faster than usual. Brendon waited until he was heading towards where Main Street flattened out, the bike swerving a little wildly from side to side, and then skimmed his heels along the ground, digging in just in time to come to a sudden stop in front of the shop.

He grinned, satisfied, and hopped off, chaining it up to the tree.

Inside, Ryan looked up. “Did they want them?” he asked.

“Some,” Brendon said, hefting the cardboard box that he’d had tied to the back onto the counter. “But these we’ve still got doubles of.” They peered doubtfully into the box and Brendon shrugged. “I guess you can’t ever have too much Tom Waits?”

“Maybe,” Ryan said, eyes getting vague and dreamy, “We could get another record player, and play them at the same time.”

“Um,” Brendon said. “You know that wouldn’t make it any better quality, right? It’d just get louder.”

“Surround sound,” Ryan countered, and Brendon grinned at him.

“Like you couldn’t do that with a wave of your hand,” he said.

Ryan screwed up his nose. “Maybe,” he agreed, “But I might break the record player by accident.”

“Which would be pretty dumb,” Brendon said. “Alright, we’ll buy another record player.”

“Good,” Ryan said decisively, and walked over to the window. The sky was grey outside, and Brendon followed him, unwinding the scarf Ryan had made him put on before he left. He bumped his shoulder against Ryan’s companionably, and Ryan turned slightly and smiled at him, running a hand through Brendon’s windswept hair. Something stuck in Brendon’s throat.

“It’s gotten so cold so fast,” Ryan said, quietly. “Winter’s almost here.”

“It couldn’t be more eventful than autumn,” Brendon told him, and Ryan ducked his head, smiling.

“Luckily,” he agreed, so soft, and Brendon hummed something out and leaned forward on the windowsill, making room for Ryan.

“It’ll snow, soon,” he said.

“Oh,” Ryan said, quiet and delighted.

Brendon moved back and walked towards the counter, kicking his shoes off, grateful for the thick socks. There was a polaroid on the counter and Brendon picked it up absently; Jon had brought his new camera around last night, been showing it off, taking pictures of all of them. Ryan had tried to explain that it wouldn’t work on him (“I’m not a vampire,” he said, rolling his eyes when Spencer suggested it, “I just, I don’t show up in photographs, like the way when I lived in the big cities people couldn’t find my shop twice, it’s. It’s about not really being completely _here_ , I think,”) and Jon had been distracted for a while by trying to get a picture of Spencer that didn’t involve Spencer flicking him off.

Then Jon had spotted Ryan and Brendon wrestling on the couch for the comfiest cushion, though, and had taken a polaroid, rolling his eyes and waving his hand when Ryan heaved a breath and started to explain again. Brendon hadn’t taken much notice, too busy gloating over his victory, until Jon had grinned and waved it at them, the photo capturing Ryan’s face bright and laughing and perfectly clear.

When he looked up, Ryan was watching him, something unfamiliar and intent in his eyes, trained on Brendon, and Brendon’s heart stuttered for a moment before he recovered, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I didn’t think I was coming back,” Ryan said, and smiled. It was the same old slightly dreamy, fucking brilliant smile. Brendon kind of loved it.

“I would have found you,” he said, aiming for light and ending up somewhere fierce, watching Ryan lean back against the windowsill, all his attention on Brendon; the first person in this town, Brendon thought, who had ever really seen him, ever thought he was worth looking at in the first place. “Wherever you went, I would have found you.”

“I know,” Ryan said.

[](http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c335/amberger80/bigbang_letters_large/22.png)he tree stretched out its bare branches in the fading evening, moving slightly in the slight wind, even more easily manoeuvred than usual without the weight of its green leaves. Passing by, people smoothed companionable hands over its bark, an absentminded touch, a sort of reminder.

It was reflected in the darkened shop window, the lights shining warmly through the glass, more bright and attractive than all the dusty wares there, and the silhouette of someone dancing. Soon there would be snow all around, snow on its branches, and the tree stretched up to the sky and waited as the wind dropped, unmoving, silent, until two people came hurrying down the street and into the shop, leaving the door ajar and the music floating out into the night.

Then the tree, too, danced in a phantom breeze.

 

 


End file.
